A five-year international research project has received major funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC Insight Grant) to investigate and address linguistic discrimination in English-speaking higher education (HE).
The project titled Voices from the Margins: Examining Linguistic Discrimination and Advancing Linguistic Justice in Higher Education is led by Angelica Galante (Principal Investigator, McGill University), Ruth Fielding (Monash University), and Mi Yung Park (University of Auckland), with research assistance from Ben Calman and Miguel Sánchez (McGill University). All members of the research team have firsthand experience as international students in English-speaking higher education and have personally encountered linguistic discrimination. This emic perspective is critical to the research project, as it allows the team to approach the topic with deep contextual understanding and sensitivity to the lived realities of plurilingual students.
The project will focus on three major hubs—Canada, New Zealand, and Australia—countries known for their plurilingual student populations yet still marked by monolingual norms in HE institutions. The three main goals include: 1) Examining the nature and impact of linguistic discrimination in HE; 2) Empowering plurilingual students—those who speak two or more languages, often from minoritized backgrounds; and 3) Developing a new quantitative tool to advance research, policy, and the well-being of plurilingual students in HE.
Through a transformative mixed methods approach, the project will capture diverse experiences and generate actionable strategies for inclusive pedagogy and institutional change.
Congratulations to the research team!
