Robert Blackwood is Professor of French Sociolinguistics at the University of Liverpool, UK, and – with Elana Shohamy – editor of the journal Linguistic Landscape. His primary research interest is the linguistic landscape, and in particular regional languages of France in the linguistic landscape. He also explores questions of memorialisation in the linguistic landscape with a specific emphasis on France's overseas territories. He is the co-author, with Stefania Tufi, of The Linguistic Landscape of the Mediterranean: French and Italian Coastal Cities (2015) and co-editor, with John Macalister, of Multilingual Memories: Monuments, Museums and the Linguistic Landscape (2020), and with Deirdre Dunlevy of Multilingualism in Public Spaces. His most recent project, with Stefania Tufi and Will Amos, has been The Bloomsbury Handbook of Linguistic Landscapes, to appear in 2024. He has also published on digital discourses and language policy. 

Durk Gorter, a distinguished scholar in the field of multilingualism, held the position of Ikerbasque research professor at the University of the Basque Country. He led the Donostia Research group on Education And Multilingualism (DREAM), contributing significantly to research on multilingual education, European minority languages, and linguistic landscapes.

His contributions include several books such as “A Panorama of Linguistic Landscape Studies” (2023), “The Minority Language as a Second Language” (2024), and “Pedagogical Translanguaging” (2021), all co-authored with Jasone Cenoz. A new book “Educational Agency and Activism in Linguistic Landscape Studies” will come out in 2024, co-edited with Edina Krompák.

He taught in the European Master in Multilingualism and Education (EMME) program and supervised various PhD theses. He also served as the editor-in-chief of the journal “Language, Culture and Curriculum”.

Gorter has been visiting scholar at various universities and he has presented at conferences worldwide. His work in the field of multilingualism earned him the Distinguished Scholar of Multilingualism award from the International Association of Multilingualism.

Sonia Paone è professoressa associata di Sociologia dell’ambiente e del territorio presso il Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche dell’Università di Pisa. È Presidente dei Corsi di Laurea Triennale e Magistrale in Scienze per la pace. Cooperazione internazionale e trasformazione dei conflitti. Dirige il Centro di ricerca interuniversitario Ecologia, Politica, Società (EPS) e fa parte del network di ricerca internazionale Advanced Urban Marginality. Si occupa di marginalità urbana in prospettiva comparata, sicurezza urbana, migrazioni e dei rapporti fra carcere e città. Ha trascorso periodi di ricerca in Francia e negli Stati Uniti.

Tra i suoi lavori: Governare l’ingovernabile: politiche degli slum nel XXI secolo (con A. Petrillo e F. Chiodelli), Ets, Pisa 2018; Città nel disordine. Marginalità, sorveglianza, controllo, Ets, Pisa, 2012; Città in frantumi. Sicurezza, emergenza e produzione dello spazio, FrancoAngeli, Milano 2008. Dirige la collana di Studi urbani e sociali Eliopoli, per la quale ha curato e tradotto i volumi di L. Wacquant (I reietti della città. Ghetto, periferia, stato, 2016 e Bourdieu va in città. Una sfida per la teoria urbana, 2023; di A. Sayad (Una Nanterre algerina. Terra di bidonville, 2019), di P. Bourdieu e A. Sayad (Lo sradicamento. La crisi della agricoltura tradizionale in Algeria, 2022).