Last December, several members of Lancaster’s Language Learning Lab travelled to Lisbon for a two-day Winter Retreat to discuss ongoing collaborative research and to develop new external funding bids with colleagues from Lisbon, Barcelona, Brussels and Toronto.

The Lisbon Winter Retreat took place on December 14-15, 2023, on the Campolide Campus of NOVA University Lisbon. The event was co-organized by Professor Susana Correia (NOVA University Lisbon) and Professor Patrick Rebuschat (Lancaster) and featured five talks and seven poster presentations.

From Lancaster, PhD students Sophie Bennett, Yuxin (Cindy) Ge and Yun-Wei (Kelly) Lee participated in the event, as did our collaborator Dr. Dogus Oksuz as well Professor Patrick Rebuschat, co-director of the Language Learning Lab.

Four leading researchers also participated and provided feedback on our research. We are very grateful to Professor Joan Mora (Barcelona), Professor Alex Housen (Brussels), Dr. Vita Kogan (Lisbon) and Professor Miquel Llompart (Barcelona) for their valuable input.

Lancaster PhD student Sophie Bennett said: “This was an excellent opportunity to discuss my research with leading experts in second language acquisition and to expand upon my knowledge of their research through attending their talks and critiquing some of the key research in second language acquisition.”

Yuxin (Cindy) Ge stated: “This experience not only enriched my current projects but also allowed me to develop sustained collaborations, and become a part of a dynamic research community.”

Yun-Wei (Kelly) Lee concluded: “The Lisbon Winter Retreat was an amazing event to me. A fun experience and my pleasure to be invited to the event overall. I look forward to the next one!"

The organizers gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by Lancaster University’s Camões Institute Chair (Cátedra) for Multilingualism and Diversity and by the ProPerL2 Project (Foundation for Science and Technology grant 2022.04013.PTDC). To learn more about the Cátedra, please visit our webpage. To find out more about ProPerL2, please visit the project website.