Professor & lab PI
Merel Keijzer is full professor of English Linguistics & English as a Second Language at the University of Groningen, where she also holds a position as a Rosalind Franklin Research Fellow. Her research interests span the learning and teaching of English as a second language but also multilingual engagement across the lifespan, with a special interest in the older adult life stage. She works on the cognitive and psychosocial effects of multilingual language engagement, in healthy older adults and those faced with cognitive and/or mood disorders. Merel aims for her research to impact those who need it (older adults) but also engages in dialogue about the importance of language considerations with colleagues from adjacent disciplines such as cognitive and social psychology, cognitive aging, neuroscience and medical sciences. Merel is a former president of the Dutch Association for Applied Linguistics and recipient of the NWO Veni (2009), Vidi (2017) and Vici (2025) awards as well as the Ammodo Award for Fundamental Science (2023).
Projects
As lab PI Merel is involved in most of the projects listed on this website. Below is a brief recap of former projects as well as her current Vici project:
CAREful. CAREful about language: The role of language in person-centered dementia care for migrants (NWO Talent Scheme: Vici)
2025 - projected end date: 2030
Dementia is labelled “the greatest global challenge for health and social care in the 21st century” [2] because it imposes significant public health challenges, including high healthcare costs, and profoundly impacts personal health by eroding memory, changing behavior, and affecting independence [1]. In addition to challenges that affect all Persons Living with Dementia (PWD), Western countries like the Netherlands face an additional difficulty: dementia disproportionately hits elderly with a migration background, a challenge “for which the current care system is unprepared” [6]. Effective communication is crucial in diagnosing and managing dementia. Although many studies mention a ‘language barrier’ in dementia care for migrants [12,13], how the language barrier exacerbates healthcare inequities has never been addressed. By extension, research on how home language input can be employed as a remediation tool to boost the mental and cognitive health of migrant PWD is lacking altogether. With this Vici project CAREful about Language, I aim to effect a change in dementia care for migrant PWD and their caregivers through scientific insights into their language needs that are pivotal in delivering person-centered dementia care. Three work packages (WPs) that cover the range of post-diagnosis dementia care tackle this aim:
- WP1 determines what language practices are needed to achieve dementia-friendly communities for migrant PWD who live at home;
- WP2 investigates the effect of person-centered home language input by means of Virtual Reality (VR) on the psychosocial health of migrant PWD during acute hospitalization;
- WP3 determines the effect of person-centered language care plans and multisensory home language therapy on the psychosocial health of migrant PWD residing in long-term dementia care.
By placing language at the core of person-centered care needs of migrant PWD, this project aims to build an urgently needed foundation of inclusive and equitable dementia care.
CogFlex. Language learning never gets old (NWO Talent Scheme: Vidi)
2018-2024
The world is aging. In Europe alone, more than 20% of citizens will be over the age of 65 by 2025. Aging is seen as “one of the greatest social and economic challenges of the 21st century” (“Ageing Policy”, 2016) and healthy aging research is put high on the agenda. This proposal presents an innovative anti-aging tool: foreign language learning. Research has singled out factors that promote healthy aging. Amidst these activities, lifelong bilingualism has been found especially “sustained, intense, and all-encompassing” (Bialystok, 2016, p.6). People who speak more than one language are reported to build up cognitive reserve, even delaying the onset of degenerate diseases like Alzheimer’s (Alladi et al., 2013). If found on a large scale, that would make bilingualism a most powerful tool against old-age disorders (Bak, 2016). But no two bilinguals are the same and bilingualism effects are therefore not universally reported, leading to questions regarding its validity (cf. Paap, 2015). In this VIDI project, I propose a new impetus to the field of bilingualism but also its applicability in healthy aging, through:
- an epidemiological study that relates individual differences in bilingual experiences to healthy aging outcomes in a sample of more than 12,000 65+ North Netherlanders. Differences include languages or dialects spoken, age at acquisition, intensity of use, and language attitudes;
- introducing a bilingual experience (foreign language learning) to a functionally monolingual group of healthy seniors and those diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment or Late Life Depression over the course of 6 months.
This two-step design is expected to shed new light on two important questions: the nature of the bilingual advantage in old age and how learning a new language after the age of 65 enhances cognitive flexibility and wellbeing levels in healthy and non-healthy elderly.
FlexLang. Learning to preserve: Foreign language training as a cognitive vaccine to prevent old-age disorders? (Young Academy Groningen interdisciplinary PhD stipend; with Prof. Marie-Jose van Tol, Cognitive Neuropsychiatry)
2017-2022
In this project, we assess the effect of a bilingual experience, in terms of a foreign language training, on cognitive flexibility: the ability to change your behavior and thoughts according to new, changing or unexpected events. Besides that, we evaluate the unique role of foreign language training versus other cognitive training programs or social engagement aspects involved in any training for seniors. We study the changes in the brain as a result of these training programs and focus on cognitive flexibility and the effect on the health of elderly people at risk for depression and cognitive decline.
Crossing Borders. Crossing communication borders: First language reversion in healthy, aging Dutch migrants in Australia (NWO Talent Scheme: Veni)
2010-2015
Demographically, developed countries are increasingly characterized by two trends: multiculturalism and a larger proportion of elderly. The first is caused by increased international mobility (Dovidio & Esses, 2001), the second by dropping fertility rates and longer life expectancies (Alho, 2008). Although both are seen as societal challenges, the accumulation of these trends brings a challenge of its own, which has been largely ignored so far: older migrants tend to have special interactional and communicative needs that are not met by current services geared towards the indigenous elderly. As more migrants reach an advanced age, this problem will increase in the coming years.
According to self-reports and reports of caretakers, aging migrants tend to show a preoccupation with the culture of origin. Typically, they often also revert to the language which they may have hardly used for decades (Schmid & Keijzer, forthc.). This development is known as language reversion: the second language (L2) recedes and the first language (L1) becomes stronger again (de Bot & Clyne, 1989). In one of its manifestations this reversion process can seriously impede or even break down communication with the next generation who were not raised to speak their parent's first language.
This study combines multilingualism and aging into a lifespan approach to bilingual proficiency in healthy, aging migrants. The rather simplistic observation that the L1 improves and the L2 erodes linearly with age is assessed against a more complex perspective which takes into account insights from cognitive aging and psycholinguistic aspects of activation and inhibition. The predictions made on this basis are qualitatively and quantitatively tested in an exploration of 'old age language development' in Dutch migrants in Australia.
