The Cold Rush project examines the transforming Arctic North as an expanding hotspot at the juncture of economic development and cultural transformation, focusing on the ways in which language and identity matter in these processes.

This project culminates in a book in four languages that is designed for the general public. In the book, roughly 40 expressions in Rhaeto-Romanic (all idioms), Italian, German (including examples in Swiss German) and French are compared. The selected expressions have the same meaning in all languages yet employ different, sometimes amusing metaphors; humorous images from all linguistic regions are used to illustrate the expressions.

The main goal of this project is to compile an inventory of existing corpora containing productions of learners of German and French as a foreign language; a further objective is defining gaps and needs in this area.  

The project looks at learning and teaching German as a Foreign Language in Israel, where after 1945 the German language was looked down upon and where learning German still does not seem self-evident today. Proceeding from the historically complex relationship between Germany and Israel and situated at the interface between sociolinguistics and foreign language didactics, the study addresses the so far underexplored question of who is nowadays learning German why, where...