Master’s Graduate Receives First-Ever WELTENMENSCH Award

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In 2025, the WELTENMENSCH Foundation Hans Nerth and LMU’s International Research Center for Multilingualism will present the WELTENMENSCH Award for the first time. The award recognizes exceptional academic theses addressing multilingualism, transcultural identities, and the interplay of language, place, and belonging. The foundation supports projects that foster new dialogues between the German language, culture, and the arts and cultures of the wider world with cultural sensitivity and openness.

The inaugural award goes to Letizia Garri for her master’s thesis in German as a Foreign Language, titled Language Use and Language Contact in the Cimbrian of Luserna: A Usage-Based Study of the Younger Generation. In her research, Garri examines the endangered minority language Cimbrian, spoken in the northern Italian linguistic enclave of Luserna, and explores how younger speakers navigate between Cimbrian, Italian, and German. The jury particularly praised the thesis for its academic depth, methodological rigor, and compelling connection to the guiding concept of the “world citizen.”

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The keynote address at the award ceremony will be delivered by Enrica Piccardo of the University of Toronto, who will be visiting LMU from May 18 to 22 as part of the Michael Clyne Research Professorship. In her lecture, From Language to Languaging to Plurilanguaging, she will explore the significance of linguistic and cultural diversity in contemporary societies and demonstrate how multilingualism and individual language biographies can empower people to mediate between cultures and languages.