Maite Puigdevall Serralvo (Banyoles, 1972) obtained a degree in Catalan Language and Literature
from the University of Girona (1990-95). She subsequently received a European Social Fund grant to
work as a research and information assistant (1995-96) for Mercator Media, a European project based
at Aberystwyth University in Wales. She then took a master’s degree in Welsh Ethnological
Studies at Cardiff University’s School of Welsh (1997-98), to which end she wrote a thesis
entitled
The Use of Welsh in the Private Sector. Problems and Experiences From the Viewpoint of the
Catalan Case. She went on to take a PhD in Language Policy at the same university (1998-2005),
writing a thesis,
The Challenge of Language Planning in the Private Sector. Welsh and Catalan Perspectives
(2006), which compares language policies in Wales and Catalonia. From 2001 to 2004, she worked as a
language and cultural adviser to a Welsh MEP in the European Parliament (Brussels/Strasbourg),
where she acquired an in-depth knowledge of the workings of the European Union’s education
and culture policies, as well as its language policies, particularly those related to
Europe’s so-called regional and minority languages. Upon returning to Catalonia, she began to
work for the Consorci Per a la Normalització Lingüística (2004-05), an organisation that promotes
the Catalan language and culture, as coordinator of its
Pla pilot d’acolliment lingüístic a Banyoles. From 2005 to 2007, she was coordinator
of the European programme
Mercator Drets i Legislació Lingüístics at the International Escarré Centre for Ethnic
Minorities and Nations (CIEMEN) in Barcelona.
Since January 2008, she has been a lecturer on the Catalan Language and Literature degree
programme run by the Arts and Humanities Department of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open
University of Catalonia, UOC). She is also academic director of the University’s Linguistic
and Cultural Diversity Management postgraduate degree programme.