How can a linguist promote the well-being of children?

How can you help a child with divorced parents to maintain a good relationship with both parents? How do you give a child a 'home feeling' even if there are two houses between which a child is commuting? And how can we give children more self-confidence and help them with their moral development? These questions are central in the work of linguist Aoju Chen. On 14 March 2019 she will hold her inaugural lecture at Utrecht University on these issues.

Chen is involved in the research project 'Where do I belong?' within the strategic theme Dynamics of Youth of Utrecht University. An interdisciplinary team of researchers investigates the 'feeling of belonging' of children of divorced parents.  Chen researches this from the perspective of linguistics, but she emphasizes that language development is more than linguistic development.

Read the full article in Dutch.