Mirjam Broersma investigates how people acquire and use multiple languages. Her research has addressed second language acquisition as well as early bilingualism, in children as well as adults, using a psycholinguistic experimental approach. She currently leads a large-scale investigation of the effects of psychological trauma on second language acquisition in refugees (Vici project).
Some of her favorite research themes:
- Second language acquisition in refugees
- Birth language memories in international adoptees
- Sound perception and production, word recognition, segmentation of continuous speech, and vocal emotion recognition in non-native listening
- Codeswitching
Some of the research tools she has co-developed:
- Lexical tests for advanced learners of English, Dutch, and German: LexTALE
- Ventriloquist paradigm
Our Vici research group examines how traumatic experiences affect well-being, cognition, and participation and how that influences learning Dutch. But also the other way round: for example, does a greater command of Dutch lead to more social contacts and improved emotional well-being?
About Mirjam Broersma
Prof. Dr. Mirjam Broersma (1976, Groningen) began her academic career at Radboud University (then known as the Catholic University Nijmegen), where she obtained propaedeutics in Arabic in 1996 and an undergraduate degree in Applied Linguistics (cum laude) in 2000. She then started her PhD programme at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics under supervision of Prof. Anne Cutler. She completed her PhD in 2005 with her dissertation “Phonetic and lexical processing in a second language.”
After obtaining her PhD, Broersma worked as postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute. From 2007 onwards, she worked as research scientist at Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University and the Max Planck Institute. From 2011 onwards, she was senior investigator at the Language Comprehension Department of the Max Planck Institute. From 2012, she worked at the Centre for Languages Studies (CLS) at Radboud University, where she was appointed Associate Professor in 2016. She is a member of the CLS Management Team.
Throughout her career, Broersma received various awards, such as the Anéla Thesis Award (2000), a BLVD award for one of the hundred most promising women of the year (2006), and a Max Planck Society Otto Hahn Medal for outstanding scientific achievements (2007). She also received multiple career development grants from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), such as a three year Veni grant (2006), a five year Vidi grant (2015), a five year Aspasia personal grant (2017), and a five year Vici grant (2023). More information, including a complete list of awards and grants, can be found on Broersma’s personal website.