Blog

First Co-researcher Meeting

Welcome to the first blog post of our research project: “Growing Up Multilingual with Chinese Heritage.” This blog will serve as a platform to offer updates on our project, focusing on the unique perspectives, attitudes, thoughts, and dreams of young people growing up as Chinese heritage language speakers.

We're incredibly excited to introduce an integral part of our project — our young co-researchers. Seven brilliant minds aged between 11 to 16 have joined our research team. These young individuals are not subjects of our study; they are active contributors, shaping our research design, contributing to data collection, analysis, and presentation, and ensuring we ask the right questions and interpret the findings in ways that truly resonate with their experiences. It enables young minds to play an active role in shaping the research that concerns their lives.

This July, we kicked off our journey with the first co-researcher meeting. We dedicated this session to the global strand of our project, which calls for multi-modal submissions from young people worldwide about their multilingual experiences. We delved into the design and potential of our global call, exploring different ways of encouraging submissions in various formats such as poetry, lyrics, songs, pictures, and essays. 

It was inspiring to see our young co-researchers dive into the details of the call, brainstorming how to effectively communicate it to the global youth community. They offered invaluable insights that helped us shape the design and framing of the global call, ensuring that it was inviting, relatable, and motivating for their peers. Their input was crucial in devising strategies to encourage submissions and promote widespread engagement.

As we continue this journey, we look forward to sharing our progress, insights, and experiences with you. Stay tuned for future updates where we'll delve deeper into our project milestones, the global call submissions, and the significant findings brought to light by our young co-researchers.