To mark the successful transition to WP4 we thought we should devote some space to comments by the three upcoming WPLs, Thomas Vogel, Kevin Haines and Stacey Marie Cozart. We asked the WP4 team for their thoughts on the project: How do you feel the project is progressing and what do you hope the outcomes will be?

2013.12.09 | Peter Stear and Julia Cooper

Thomas:  “It’s working! The best outcome will be a picture of the landscape of diverse, heterogeneous people in the MLLS, where people from outside will know how to place themselves in it. This will be even better than the recommendations of better practices.”

Kevin: “I do think it’s going very well, having so many people together working together. There has been a positive impact on my own university life, creating opportunities for good practice, opening up issues, getting people to discuss with you, who wouldn’t otherwise talk to you.”

Stacey: “Really well. I think that the WP leaders and the Management Committee have done a really good job of leading us forward and keeping us on track. People have been very engaged and taken it very seriously, am looking forward to us focusing more on inspirational practices to do with the MMLS.”

We would also like to take this opportunity to welcome Bob Wilkinson (Maastricht University) to the project. IntlUni will no doubt benefit greatly from his long-standing involvement in research on the administrative implementation of internationalisation strategies and language policy. In his view, there is a need to move away from “critical incidents”, which tend to “focus on the negative”. Rather, one should, as will be the case with WP4, focus on the “opportunities of the MMLS” and, in so doing, the IntlUni project can be viewed as “filling a gap” in the research available. On that very positive assessment of the direction the project is taking, we look forward to producing many more examples of successful practice from our respective partner universities prior to meeting at Lausanne in 2014.