Alumni

Sophie van der Meulen
Pouran Seifi
Lottie Gort
Andrej Palmen
Lisanne Schouten
Marlous Visser

Alumni

PR & Communication
Drongo Language Festival

Sophie van der Meulen

Sohpie van der Meulen works for the DRONGO language festival. This Yearly language festival is held in Utrecht, and is aimed at anyone who works in the field of language or is interested in language and language learning. The DRONGO is a blue songbird who is able to imitate the sounds of many different animals. A perfect name for a festival that focuses on Multilingualism. Within the DRONGO tean, Sophie's areas of expertise are PR and Communication. Do you see something about the DRONGO language festival passing by on social media? Probably the work of Sophie!

PhD University of Groningen

Pouran Seifi

After graduating, Pouran started her PhD at the University of Groningen, where she is part of the Applied Linguistics group. The focus of Pouran's project is on Persians who learn English as a foreign language (EFL). Because of distinctive cross-linguistic differences, Persian EFL learners encounter difficulties while processing reading for comprehension. In the study, subjects have to read texts to examine the effects of visual characteristics of Persian orthography on their reading behaviour. During this activity, their eye movements are tracked. With her research, Pouran will contribute to the understanding of difficulties of students in comprehending the sentences with relative clauses (RC) that are the most complicated features of English syntax for Persians and other EFL learners.

Research and Development employee at Diataal
Teaching assistent M&M

Lottie Gort

Lottie Gort works as a Research & Development employee at Diataal BV and as a teaching assistent at the Minorities and Multilingualism programme. Diataal BV is a digital student tracking system for both language (Dutch and English) and mathematics. The focus of the company is on digital fromative testing in primary and secondary education. In addition, they've developed a final test (Dia-eindtoets) for primary education, which is approved as an official final test in 2016. Lottie mainly deals with the management of the final test project, but is also involved in the other projects of primary education. Within the Minorities & Multilingualism team, Lottie is coordinating the pre-master. In addition, she coordinates the organisation of information events like open days and student for a day activities, and supports the team where necessary!

Research assistant Mercator Research Centre

Marlous Visser

After finishing the MA Multilingualism in 2016, Marlous Visser started working as a research assistant at the Mercator Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, one of the partners of our MA. This centre is part of the Fryske Akademy and focuses especially on Linguistic Diversity and Multilingualism. Marlous' work consists mainly of editing regional dossiers, that are written by experts of the concerning country. The files of the Mercator Research Centre describe minority languages in education. They all have a fixed structure, which makes it easy to compare them to each other. In addition, Marlous contributes to the project 'Teaching in Diversity', which is a European project with ten partners from eight countries in Europe. The goal of the project is to give more insight in how to deal with different languages and different cultures in class.

Intake coordinator Top Taal

Andrej Palmen

Andrej Palmen started his job as project manager at TopTaal in 2016. Nowadays he works as an intake coordinator. TopTaal is a language institute with language courses for everyone at every level. On the one hand TopTaal prepares foreigners for the naturalization test in the Netherlands. On the other hand, they offer Dutch classes to people with Dutch as their second language and who want to improve their Dutch. TopTaal organizes courses at locations all over the Netherlands. Within the company, Andrej organizes the intakes, takes care of the tests in order to determine the startlevel of the students and he puts them into the right group. He works at their location in Veenendaal.

Project Manager Wilkens c.s. Vertalers - Tolken

Lisanne Schouten

After the MA Multilingualism, Lisanne found a job at Wilkens c.s. Vertalers - tolken. This is a translation agency with a multilingual communication service for both relations inside and outside the Netherlands. Lisanne's responsibility within the company is to ensure the correct translation for customers.She takes care of the translation jobs and she ensures that texts are getting translated by the right person for the right budget. In addition, she runs analyses on the texts that need to be translated and she solves problems at the side of the either the customer or the translator. Overall, Lisanne is the intermediary between customer and translator.

Success Stories