A €1M research project led by an academic at the University of Leiden will study multilingualism in Galicia and Gibraltar. 

María del Carmen Parafita Couto will lead a four-year project at the University of Santiago De Compostela titled BABELBRAIN: The Brain of Babel – Mapping Multilingual Ecologies.

The new project will compare multilingual communities in Belize and Benin previously studied by Parafita Couto with Galicia and Gibraltar, regions where the use of Galician and Spanish is in decline. 

She will also partner with the University of Vigo’s team, led by Professor Elena Seoane, which specializes in studying English in Gibraltar.

In an interview with El Correo Gallego, Parafita Couto explained that BABELBRAIN delves into the "fascinating world of multilingual linguistic interactions."