Roehampton academic sees bidding success in British Psychological Society Research Seminar Competition
- Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Dr Virginia Lam from the University of Roehampton’s School of Psychology, alongside Layal Husain from the University of East London, have led a successful grant application with the British Psychological Society (BPS) to support their research seminar programme: Growing Up Bilingual: Researcher and Practitioner Synergies.
This series brings together academics and practitioners specialised in bilingual development. Bilingual development is an important topic that spans multiple subdisciplines within psychology and beyond and eclipses various areas of practice, with the large and growing population that use additional languages besides English in the UK.
The series aims to raise the profile of this topic; help to identify overlapping interests, needs and goals between academics and practitioners; and lead to collaborative partnerships developing further projects on the topic.
The three seminars aim to address three interrelated questions:
- How do bilingual children acquire and maintain their languages?
- How can growing up bilingual impact developmental outcomes?
- How may we use our understanding to help bilingual children towards optimum development?
The first seminar, taking place online on Friday 5 November, 12:30 – 16:30, will focus on areas such as sources and means for language acquisition, language group variations, and how individual and environmental factors may impact outcomes including language proficiency and maintenance.
Find out more about the seminar, including guest speakers and how to book here.
Dr Lam added, “my co-I and I are delighted to be able to offer this series to bridge the academic and practice communities – which we’ve been eager to see since the start of our project in 2018. This award from the BPS helps us to enact it in a strategic way over the next ten months. Indeed, I hope that this series will lead to meaningful synergies and lasting partnerships as a key goal.”
In our School of Psychology, the work of our researchers aims to improve understanding of the factors that influence health, mental health and wellbeing in humans. This excellent research feeds through into our teaching. Find out more about our undergraduate and postgraduate degrees here.