OVERVIEW

PLURIBO is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) project funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme (Grant Agreement No. 101208578), coordinated by the University of Bologna and carried out in collaboration with the University of Basel (Switzerland) and the University of California, Los Angeles — UCLA (USA). The project aims to understand how to promote the linguistic integration of pupils with a migrant background in schools by analysing both language policies and the role of bottom-up plurilingual practices and language mediation services in real educational contexts.

The research is conducted by researcher Federica Ceccoli and is developed through an international collaboration between Italy, Switzerland and the United States. At the University of Bologna, the project is carried out under the supervision of Rachele Antonini, a scholar of sociolinguistics, public service interpreting, and participatory and bottom-up approaches. The outgoing phase takes place at the University of Basel under the supervision of Lorenza Mondada, one of the world’s leading experts in Ethnomethodology and Multimodal Conversation Analysis (EMCA). The project also includes a secondment period at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) under the supervision of Inmaculada García-Sánchez, a scholar of linguistic anthropology and education in migrant contexts.

PLURIBO adopts an interdisciplinary approach that integrates three main research methodologies. Multimodal conversation analysis, grounded in ethnomethodology, is used to examine authentic classroom interactions — including those mediated by interpreters — in order to understand how pupils use their linguistic resources to communicate and learn. This is complemented by sociolinguistic methods based on interviews exploring the perspectives of teachers, students, and language mediators, as well as by the analysis of language policies and educational practices related to the integration of pupils with a migrant background.

Through this integrated approach, the project seeks to provide an in-depth understanding of the relationships between language policies and real educational practices, and of the role of linguistic diversity in processes of learning and participation in school.