The Multilingualism and Cognition Research Group is delighted to welcome Dr Gabriela Tavares as a new Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellow at Lancaster University.

Gabriela joins the Department of Linguistics and English Language on 1 October 2026 and will work under the supervision of Professor Patrick Rebuschat and Professor Jason Rothman. Her two-year project, VISTA (Variables in Immersive Statistical Language Learning: Trajectories and Aptitudes), is funded by the European Commission through the prestigious MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships scheme.

VISTA investigates one of the most enduring questions in language learning: why some people learn new languages more successfully than others, even when exposed to similar learning conditions. The project focuses on how cognitive abilities, auditory processing skills, and prior multilingual experience interact to shape the earliest stages of language acquisition.

To address this question, Gabriela will combine innovative language-learning experiments with behavioural testing and electroencephalography (EEG). Working with adult learners of European Portuguese, the project will examine how individuals acquire sounds, words, and grammatical patterns from naturalistic input, shedding light on the mechanisms that support successful language learning in immersive environments.

The project will be based in both the Lancaster Language Learning Lab (L4) and the Brain and Bilingual Experience Lab (BaBEL), contributing to Lancaster's internationally recognised strengths in multilingualism, language learning, psycholinguistics, and cognitive neuroscience.

In addition to the supervision provided by Professor Patrick Rebuschat and Professor Jason Rothman, the project will benefit from the expertise of two advisors: Professor Padraic Monaghan, Co-Director of the Lancaster Language Learning Lab and Professor of Psychology at Lancaster University, and Professor Kara Morgan-Short (University of Illinois Chicago), an internationally recognised expert in second language learning, bilingualism, and the neurocognition of language learning.

Professor Patrick Rebuschat said: "Gabriela's project brings together several of the themes that define our research group: multilingualism, individual differences, statistical learning, and cognitive neuroscience. VISTA is an ambitious and innovative project that will help us better understand why language-learning outcomes differ so markedly across individuals. We are delighted to welcome Gabriela to Lancaster and look forward to working with her over the next two years."

Before joining Lancaster, Gabriela held academic positions at NOVA University Lisbon, Corvinus University of Budapest, and the University of Lisbon. Her research spans second language acquisition, speech learning, language teaching, and multilingualism, and she brings extensive experience in both research and higher education teaching.

We warmly welcome Gabriela to Lancaster and look forward to the exciting research, collaborations, and discoveries that will emerge from the VISTA project.