Lancaster’s Department of Linguistics and English Language and Ghent’s Department of Linguistics have recently established a new partnership between our institutions. Our Departments are particularly well-matched in terms of research areas, ambition, size (staff and students) and orientation (emphasis on empirical language research). This initiative will run for three years (2016-2019); during this period, we will explore joint research projects and potential teaching links, including co-supervision of postgraduate students. The partnership involves both academic staff and students from our institutions.

The cornerstone of our partnership are two annual delegation visits. Each delegation consists of 5-6 members of staff; there will be one Lancaster visit to Ghent every year and one Ghent visit to Lancaster. The host university will organize a symposium around each delegation visit and widely publicize the event. This means there will be six delegation visits (and symposia) in the 2016-2019 period. The first symposium takes place in Lancaster on March 23, 2017, with the second symposium taking place in Ghent in April 18-19, 2017.

In addition, to the annual delegation visits and symposia, there will several individual visits by staff members, and we will maintain an active student exchange program between our Departments. Our Erasmus+ agreements cover two undergraduate and postgraduate students per academic year.