IMICLES network

Internationalisation and Multilingualism:

Strategies for the Integration of Content and Language in Higher Education

 

What is IMICLES?

IMICLES is a national thematic research network (RED2024-154338-T) that brings together universities and research groups from different autonomous communities with a shared objective: to carry out a project aimed at analysing, understanding, and improving the integration of languages and content, as well as internationalisation processes and multilingual practices in higher education in Spain.

The project

The project, coordinated by researcher Noelia Ruiz-Madrid (Universitat Jaume I), is based on a key idea: a coherent and effective internationalisation policy requires a solid, evidence-based language policy. From this premise, IMICLES provides academic and technical support to university governance, connecting research, teaching, and institutional decision-making.

The starting point of the project is the current situation of the Spanish university system, which in recent years has experienced:

  • Sustained growth in teaching through foreign languages, particularly English;
  • Significant inequalities across universities and regions;
  • A lack of structured professional development for teaching in multilingual contexts;
  • An urgent need for data-informed, evidence-based decision-making.

To this end, the IMICLES research team conducts a comparative analysis of policies and practices, the teaching in and of foreign languages, the teacher education models of the participating universities, and national best practices.
In doing so, it generates comparable quantitative and qualitative data to support institutional decision-making.

In this way, the Network aims to place at the service of society concrete results with direct impact, such as:

  • A national comparative diagnosis of language policies, internationalisation, and English-medium education (EME), published in open access;
  • Comparable quantitative and qualitative empirical data across universities;
  • The identification of effective models, structural weaknesses, and emerging trends;
  • Open-access academic publications and a collective monograph.

From a knowledge transfer perspective, the project will provide direct recommendations for universities, rectorates, vice-rectorates, and language policy units, contributing to a more inclusive, coherent, and sustainable internationalization process.

News and events