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.