The graduation of our new Multilingualism experts

On August 26 twelve students officially graduated from the MA Multilingualism during a celebratory ceremony at the Gysbert Japicx room in the historical library Tresoar in Leeuwarden, where the majority of our classes is taught.

The ceremony was attended by many people who not only witnessed the students signing their degree, but who also caught a glimpse of the wide variety of topics the MA graduates researched for their dissertations. Each thesis supervisor had prepared a short personal story for their students. This is one of the advantages of being a small programme; the teaching staff gets to know the students well during the course of a year. Therefore the teachers could introduce the audience to the a broad range of thesis topics, which all related to multilingualism in their own way. From ‘Eye Movements and Linguistic Landscapes’ via ‘An Ethnographic Study on the Slavic Macedonian Dialect of North-Western Greece’, and ‘Bilingual language control and cognitive control: individual differences’ to ‘Language Choice and Cultural Differences in Textual Tattoos’ to name but a few.

In addition to the teachers of our programme, family members and friends came out to witness these memorable moments, some of which were quite emotional.

Especially exceptional was that five out of these twelve students managed to graduate ‘with distinction’ or ‘cum laude’. Part of this group was Nienke Jet de Vries MA MA, who also received a degree from a previously run Master programme in (Frisian) Literary Studies; she succeeded in getting a twofold cum laude. Congratulations to you all!