Thrilled to announce that our own Toms Voits has been selected to deliver the University of Reading 2020 Fairbrother lecture! The Fairbrother Lecture is a prestigious annual event where a single doctoral researcher from the University is selected to present their research to the general public. This year Toms will talk about his PhD research, focusing on the effects of bilingualism on the ageing brain (see below for a summary of the talk).
So don’t miss this public event, due to take place on May the 12th, 7 pm, at the University of Reading! This public event is free but booking required, so make sure to secure your tickets. For more info, and to book your free ticket, click here.
LANGUAGES ON THE MIND – THE EFFECTS OF BILINGUALISM ON MIND AND BRAIN
Language is frequently in the headlines, from worries about people speaking too many languages or too few, to questions of whether bilingualism protects against cognitive decline in later life. Bilingualism has featured prominently in language debates, with stories often over-simplifying a more complex picture.
Cut to the heart of recent research on brain and language. Follow researcher Toms Voits on a journey through the uniqueness and complexity of the human brain’s capacity for language. This public lecture will introduce the ways in which two or more languages co-habit within a single mind, the processing issues of co-operation and competition between languages which arise from that, and the much-debated effects of bilingualism on mind and brain. With a focus on research on bilingualism in older adults, the lecture will examine some of the complexities that need to be unpicked in order to understand relationships between ageing, cognitive health and language.