Dr. Ellen-Petra Kester is an Associate Professor of Spanish linguistics at Utrecht University. After receiving her Ph.D. from Utrecht University, she was employed at the University of Amsterdam where she continued her work on the syntax of Germanic and Romance languages. More recently she has been conducting research on the syntactic properties of Papiamento, the Spanish-Portuguese based creole language spoken on Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao.

Over the years she developed a strong interest in the language situation of the former Netherlands Antilles, where Papiamento and English, the mother tongues spoken by the majorities of the populations of the Dutch Leeward and Windward Islands, are co-official with Dutch. Since 2010 she expanded her research to language use, language attitudes and language policy  in relation to the multiple identities of the populations of the Caribbean island that are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  

In 2013 Ellen-Petra Kester carried out a government mandated research project on the island of St. Eustatius, together with prof. dr. Nicholas Faraclas (University of Puerto Rico) and drs. Eric Mijts (University of Aruba), which led to a change in the language of instruction  in the education system of the island.

In 2016 she joined a project funded by the Uitvoeringsorganisatie van de Twinningfaciliteit Suriname - Nederland (UTSN), developing a course as well as a manual on cultural diversity and multilingualism for teacher trainers in Surinam.

Ellen-Petra Kester has been the coordinator of a Master’s program on multilingualism and language acquisition (Meertaligheid en Taalverwerving) since 2016 and also teaches courses on Spanish linguistics in the Bachelor’s program on Spanish Language and Culture at Utrecht University.

Since 2010 she has been a guest lecturer in the Master’s program for Education at the University of Curaçao, teaching courses and supervising students’ research in the domain of multilingualism, language contact and language acquisition.