Camões Institute Cátedra

Welcome, bem-vind@s!

Welcome to the webpage of Lancaster’s Camões Institute Chair for Multilingualism and Diversity, or Cátedra Camões para o Multilinguismo e a Diversidade in Portuguese.

Here, you will find information about the Lancaster Cátedra, our objectives and our partners, Portugal’s Camões Institute. We regularly publish news items and organize events, which can be found on this website.

The Cátedra was officially launched in June 2023. It is directed by Professor Patrick Rebuschat, a specialist in bilingualism and additional language learning (L2, L3, L4, Ln...), based in Lancaster's Department of Linguistics and English Language.

What is a “Cátedra”?

The term “Cátedra” translates as Chair or Professorship in academic contexts. It is essentially a financial endowment to support a range of activities at a given university.
How do you pronounce the words "Cátedra" and "Camões"?

We are working on audio clips so that you can hear what these words sound like in Portuguese.

In the meantime, this is how we would transcribe the European Portuguese pronunciation of the words "cátedra" and "Camões" using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a system of phonetic notation used in linguistics.

Cátedra: [ˈkatɨdɾɐ]

Camões: [kaˈmõj̃ʃ]
How to contact us

For general enquries, please contact catedra-camoes@lancaster.ac.uk.

About Lancaster’s Cátedra

The Lancaster Cátedra focuses on multilingualism, i.e. our ability to learn and use multiple languages across the lifespan.

Our mission is to promote research on multilingualism and to raise awareness of the benefits of speaking more than one language. Diversity includes, but naturally is not limited to, linguistic diversity.

We do this by organizing academic events (e.g., conferences) and non-academic events (e.g., workshops for parents or teachers), by supporting research on multilingualism, by financially assisting mobility between the UK and Portugal, and by producing materials to disseminate relevant research findings among the general public in a variety of formats (e.g., videos, posters).

The Cátedra was officially launched in June 2023. Our activities are jointly funded by the Camões Institute and the University’s Global Advancement Fund. It is directed by Professor Patrick Rebuschat, a specialist in bilingualism and additional language learning (L2, L3, L4, Ln...).

The Camões Institute established Chairs at many universities throughout the world. In the UK, you can find Cátedras at the universities of Birmingham, Lancaster, King's College London, Manchester, and Oxford. The Lancaster Cátedra is distinctive as it focuses on language.

About the Camões Institute

The Camões Institute is the branch of the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs which is responsible for the promotion of Portuguese language and culture overseas. Click below to learn more about our partners.

A core mission of the Camões Institute is the delivery of Portuguese language classes to the descendants of Portuguese citizens who are residing overseas (Portuguese as a heritage language) and to residents of other countries who wish to learn Portuguese (Portuguese a foreign language). This is accomplished by the maintenance of a network which offers Portuguese heritage and foreign language classes in 76 countries across the world.

In the UK, the Camões Institute heritage language network consists of a team 27 teachers who offer Portuguese as heritage language to over 3,500 students, ages 6 to 17, at 50 schools in the UK. The network is directed by Dr. Cátia Verguete, Attaché for Educational Affairs at the Portuguese Embassy in London. In addition, there are six Camões Institute Chairs (cátedras), four language centers, and 13 endowed lectureships (leitorados) at universities in the UK.

To find out more about the presence of the Camões Institute in the UK, please visit this page.

Who was Camões?

The Camões Institute is named after Luís Vaz de Camões, Portugal’s national poet. He is most well-known for the epic poem Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads, 1572), which celebrates the discovery of a sea route to India by Vasco da Gama. In 2024, Portugal celebrates the 500^th anniversary of the birth of Camões.

Lancaster and Portugal

Did you know that Lancaster has long-standing ties to Portugal? Today, nearly 190 Portuguese citizens and students are valued members of the Lancaster University community, one of the largest Portuguese student bodies in the UK.