Anamaria Bentea
Anamaria Bentea is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Konstanz, where she is hosted by Prof. Theodoros Marinis. Her research interests lie especially in the domain of bi- and multilingual language development, processing and production. In a new exciting research project with Prof. Monika Schmid at the University of Essex, Anamaria will focus on heritage language speakers - bilinguals who acquire their first language at an early age in a minority setting with reduced input and a strong influence of the dominant societal language. More specifically, the aim is to uncover whether and how the dominant societal language impacts heritage language acquisition, maintenance and even loss. The processing of heritage language will be assessed online by collecting eye-tracking data during language comprehension from adult heritage speakers of Romanian in the UK and Germany. The jointly collected data will allow the comparison in two countries thus contributing to and advancing the current research on heritage language.
Federic Marconi
Federica Marconi is a PhD student in the PhD Program of the Management and Law Department of Tor Vergata University in Rome, which is part of the University’s Doctoral School. Her research topic investigates the interconnections between public procurement and the risk of corruption during times of emergency, such as the actual COVID-19 pandemic. In comparing the Italian and the German system the research project aims to examine the issues of transparency and accountability in public tenders: a balancing act between the need for speeding up the awarding procedures on the one hand and fighting the risk of abuse and corruption on the other. Federica Marconi was hosted by Prof. Eva Thomann at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Konstanz. Find out more interesting details about the project here