Founder and PI of the competitively funded research group ALLENCAM (Language Acquisition from Multilingual Catalonia) (2005-2015), a task which I combined with the participation in the Age Factor research programme at the Universitat de Barcelona, and in about 15 different European projects and networks dealing with multilingualism. They included a recent COST action on Study Abroad in European Perspective (SAREP), in which I acted as Vice-President, and earliest projects, i.e. the IntClass project, the MOLAN network, the ALPME - which I myself coordinated - the CLIL Compendium, The Thematic Network in the Area of Languages,  FABULA, etc...  Within ALLENCAM I was principal investigator of the research programme on Study Abroad and Language Acquisition (SALA) (2004-2017) through 6 competitive projects. SALA was a pioneer initiative in Spain, and had a great impact in Europe and internationally.

Institutional responsabilities and management at UPF

  • Founder and first director of the language center at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Idiomes, UPF) https://www.upf.edu/web/idiomesupf/sobre-nosaltres (1999-2004). 
  • Appointed Vice rector for the Promotion of Languages (2004-2008).
  • Rector's Delegate for languages (2008-2013).
  • Appointed Coordinator and Director of the Department of Translation and Language Sciences' Doctoral programme (2018-2022).
  • Appointed Academic Coordinator for the EUTOPIA Alliance, UPF project (2022-2025).

Current research interests: They include second and foreign language acquisition by young and adolescent learners; bi/multilingualism; individual differences, and the effects of different learning contexts, i.e. Study Abroad (SA), immersion (CLIL/EMI), formal instruction (FI), and more recently virtual environments.

Prior engagements: I was professor in secondary education, where I taught English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to adolescent learners. I gained a Chair in 1989. I also served as an appointed teacher trainer of the Generalitat de Catalunya (1985-1989), till I obtained a PhD on child bilingualism in English and Catalan in 1995, and entered UPF, where I gained a Chair in English and Language Acquisition in 2018. I also hold an M. A. in Applied Linguistics from Reading University (UK) (1983), and a degree in Spanish philology (UAB, Spain)(1971) and in English Philology (UB, Spain) (1982).