Jane Freeland

Jane Freeland's main research interest is the language politics and planning of developing minority and indigenous linguistic rights in the multilingual region of Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast, since the Sandinista Revolution of 1979, though she has also worked on translation and on gender issues. She has been involved since 1980 in the practical implementation of aspects of these rights, e.g. in the methodological design of the literacy manuals in English for the Creoles of the Coast, part of a multilingual extension of the Literacy Campaign; collaboration with the Nicaraguan NGO, FADCANIC, in a CIIR-sponsored study of the linguistic needs of the Caribbean Coast. Since 2000 she has regularly contributed modules on Sociolinguistics and on Language Politics and Planning to the Licenciatura in Intercultural-Bilingual Education at the Autonomous Regional University of the Caribbean Coast URACCAN. In 2004 she authored the first volume in a series of support materials for bilingual teacher training, and (2004) has just finished coordinating information on the languages of the Coast provided by linguists working there, for a forthcoming UNDP report.