Activities and publications

 

Please keep an eye on this page for more upcoming community events and scientific publications!

When we have finished the studies, we will also publish a short report with the main findings on this page.

 

If you’d like to invite our team for a free visit or short talk at your community centre or organisation, please get in touch with us.

 

Public talks

May 2025: MultiAge visited the British Muslim Heritage Centre at Manchester during the jummah. We were glad that we sparked an open conversation about language switching and cognition in dementia. We are thankful to the BMHC for the generous invitation and to the large community for their helpful feedback and involved discussions. It was also an absolute pleasure to see a historical heritage site mosque and we surely took many photos of the fantastic building and court yard!  

 

April 2026: We presented a talk at the Henry Barran Community Centre, Leeds - ladies’ group. We spoke about ageing and multilingualism, as well as the importance of practicing both languages for ageing.  

February 2026: We gave a talk at the Henry Barran Community Centre, Leeds. We spoke about ageing and multilingualism at the men’s community group, where discussion concentrated on the role of the home language across the generations and the importance of social networks for practicing both languages.  

January 2026: We presented two talks and held discussions for the women’s and men’s groups in the Pakistani Community Centre, Derby. Our discussions sparked genuine interest in the importance of research on multilingual heritage-language communities in the UK, and generally - on the value of studying language control in older adults.

 

January 2026: We visited the GAP SHAP group in Newcastle, where we spoke about multilingualism and ageing, and enjoyed a very welcoming and engaged discussion on the topic.  

November 2025: We were invited to Small Heath’s Neighbourhood Planning event, Birmingham. We spoke about the importance of multilingualism in our community and neighbourhood, and how multilingual people’s cognitive and language abilities may change with age. We specifically addressed the importance of including multilinguals’ voices in the better scientific understanding of ageing and dementia.

 

 

November 2025: We gave a talk at Hamara Centre’s men’s group, Leeds. We discussed the meaning of multilingualism, the status of South Asian languages in the UK, and how our brain changes - including its language abilities - when we age.

 

October 2025: We gave a talk at Hamara Centre’s women’s group, Leeds. Here we discussed the nature of multilingualism in the context of South Asian languages, how languages change across generations, as well as language and ageing more broadly.

 

August 2025: Our team gave a talk at Longsight Community Art Space, Manchester, for the Chai Kahni group for local men. We spoke about language and ageing and presented an overview of the MultiAge project.

 

May 2025: Dr Zlati Ilchovska presented a general-public talk on bilingual brains’ potential, as part of the multinational multi-city “Pint of Science” festival, York, UK. She talked about the value of bilingualism and the benefits it can offer to us, while also debunking a few popular myths about bilingualism!

 

 

Media

September 2025: Dr Farah Nazir and Dr Angela de Bruin were invited as guests at Fever FM Radio to discuss the way language changes with ageing and why there is little research on how this affects bilingual speakers, especially of minority languages like Pahari-Pothwari/Mirpuri and/or Panjabi. They also discussed topics such as which language we think and feel in and how that changes from a generation to another within a diaspora. Listen back here from 1:10:50 onwards using this direct link to the recording.

 

 

Conference presentations and posters

April 2026: Zlati presented a talk at the University of Southampton, on language control and ageing. She discussed some preliminary findings that the project has already produced.  

February 2026: Zlati presented a talk at the Psychologinguistics Research Group of the School of Psychology, University of Birmingham. She discussed language control with ageing in heritage multilingual speakers.  

November 2025: Dr Angela de Bruin presented a research talk at the Psychonomic Society meeting, in Denver (USA). She presented research looking at the benefits of code switching, specifically how multilinguals might use code switches to let the listener know that unexpected information is coming up.

 

De Bruin, A., & Bennett, A. (2025, November). The influence of code switching on the processing of unpredictable information. 66th Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Denver, USA.

 

Late September 2025: Dr Zlati Ilchovska presented online a research talk at the Brazilian Seminar of Language and Cognition, organised by the State University of Campinas. She spoke on the topic of control during language switching. Additionally, she presented the structure of the MultiAge project, some preliminary findings of its first study, and talked about the role of the switching context, in which bilinguals practice their two languages daily. You can watch the recording of the Youtube stream, starting at 33:34.

 

Ilchovska, Z. G., Nazir, F., & de Bruin, A. (2025, September). Language control with ageing in heritage language speakers: Cued and voluntary language switching contexts. V Seminário Linguagem e Cognição - InCognitus, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem da Univ ersidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, Brazil.

 

Early September 2025: Dr Zlati Ilchovska presented a research poster with preliminary findings at the very large conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP), held at the University of Sheffield. The poster enjoyed a lot of attention and sparked the interest of a variety of researchers in bilingualism, multilingualism, ageing and minority languages!

 

Ilchovska, Z. G., Nazir, F., & de Bruin, A. (2025, September). Language control with ageing in heritage language speakers: Cued and voluntary language switching contexts. 24th biennial conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCoP), Sheffield City, UK

 

June 2025: Dr Angela de Bruin presented a research poster on a preliminary study looking at how multilingual language choice is influenced by the language choices of your conversation partner. This poster was presented at one of the largest conferences on multilingualism worldwide - the International Symposium on Bilingualism, in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.

 

de Bruin, A., Sequiera, A., & Grace, E. (2025, June). Language choice alignment in bilingual speakers. International Symposium on Bilingualism, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain.

 

November 2024: Dr Angela de Bruin presented a talk on a research project looking at the way multilinguals’ language production is influenced by short exposure to other multilinguals. This talk was given at one of the largest conferences on experimental psychology worldwide (Psychonomic Society), in New York City (USA).

 

de Bruin, A., Wang, J., Daryanani, R., & Coumel, M. (2024, November). Bilingual language switching during production: the impact of exposure to another bilingual’s switching patterns. 65th Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, New York City, USA.

 

 

Accepted publications

de Bruin, A., Wang, J., Daryanani, R., & Coumel, M. (2025). Language switching during production: The influence of preceding exposure to other bilinguals in different switching contexts. Memory & Cognition, 1-22.