A brief CV

Mª Elena Gómez Parra, PhD, graduated from the University of Granada as an English Philologist and then from the University of Córdoba as a PhD. She holds a Master in Distant Education (UNED). Currently, she is an interdisciplinary researcher working mainly within Intercultural Education, Bilingual Education, and English as a Foreign Language. She is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Córdoba, Spain. Dr. Gómez Parra is the director of the Research Group HUM-1006 (Research in Bilingual and Intercultural Education); she is a full member of ATINER, the President of IBIE (Ibero-American Bilingual and Intercultural Education) Network since its foundation, the Director of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree (EMJMD) entitled Play, Education, Toys and Languages (PETaL), the IP of the Research Project ‘LinguApp: LinguApp: asegurando el acceso al aprendizaje universal e inclusivo de segundas lenguas’ (Ref. no. PRY208/17, funded by Centro de Estudios Andaluces, July 2017-July 2019), the IP of the Research Spanish National Project entitled ‘Facing Bilinguals: Study of Bilingual Education Programmes’ Results through Social Data Analysis’ (2018-2021)

The amazing benefits of being bilingual: evidence from individuals

The benefits of being bilingual are undisputable nowadays, and it conveys three dimensions that, up to these researchers’ best knowledge, have never been analyzed together before: a. Mobility; b. Intercultural Competences; c. Employability. Human mobility – either voluntary or forced – occurs throughout the world today, employability is a human concern throughout life and intercultural competence is what keeps us together as human beings. Our talk will look at these three dimensions through the eyes of former bilingual learners.With better understanding of the benefits bilingualism affords (regarding those three dimensions), we believe we can contribute to supporting the great task of education stakeholders. In this plenary we will look at some of the work carried out by the researchers of the project “Facing Bilinguals: Study of the results of the bilingual education programs through the massive collection and analysis of data extracted from social networks” (BESOC) (EDU2017-84800-R). In particular, we will present and discuss data from bilinguals collected across five different countries ( Spain, Portugal, Colombia, Brazil and Canada) through an online questionnaire designed and validated by the BESOC researchers.