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Michael G. T. Strubell/ Miquel Strubell i Trueta
Curriculum vitae

Born in 1949 in Oxford (UK). English father and Catalan mother. He holds both UK and Spanish citizenship.

He has lived in London, Madrid and Barcelona.

He took an Hon. BA on Psychology and Physiology (PPP) at the University of Oxford, an M.Sc. in Psychology of Education at the Institute of Education, London University, and a degree in Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where he also has the Diploma in Advanced Studies.


He has researched in family and educational bilingualism, and has written on language policies, language planning and related topics, especially in the field of European minority languages.


After working for international schools for eight years, in 1980 he became the head of the Servei de Normalització Lingüística of the Generalitatde Catalunya (Government of Catalonia), promoting the recovery of the use of the Catalan language, under director Aina Moll and Miquel Reniu. In 1988 he became head of another branch of the Direcció General de Política Lingüística, the Institut de Sociolingüística Catalana under the directorship of Miquel Reniu (for whom he was acting deputy director general for five months) and Lluís Jou. 


He was secretary of the Consell Social de la Llengua Catalana, and since 2005 he has been a full member of it; and he was a member of the board of directors, and later vice-chairman, of the Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística.


Between September 1999 and his retirement in September 2014 he lectured at the UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) in Barcelona in language planning and sociolinguistics. He was deputy director of the Estudis d'Humanitats i Filologia, and from April 2001 to September 2004 he was the director of the Humanities degree programme. He was a co-author of the White paper on the Humanities degree (2005), a project published by ANECA, the Universities quality agency in Spain. After being executive Secretary of the Linguamón-UOC Chair in Multilingualism, directed by Isidor Marí, he himself took over as director in 2009, until his retirement in September 2014. 


He is the author of the following books: Llengua i població a Catalunya (1981), La llengua catalana a l'àrea barcelonina (with J. M.Romaní, 1986), The Catalan Language: Progress towards normalisation (with Jude Webber, 1991); Estudis i propostes per a l'extensió de l'ús social de la llengua catalana (coordinator, 1991); Euromosaic. Production and reproduction of minority language groups in the EU (coordinator and co-author, 1996); and Discussion manual on lesser-used languages (with Jordi Bañeres, 1998), and Llengua i reivindicacions nacionals a Catalunya (with Ernest Querol, 2009) and Democratic policies for language revitalisation: The case of Catalan (with Emili Boix, 2011). Moreover in 1984 he co-edited (with Maria Ros) a special issue (vol. 47) of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language on "Catalan Sociolinguistics", and was co-editor with Henri Boyer of a special issue on “La politique linguistique de la Catalogne autonome et la sociolinguistique catalane: un état des lieux”, of the Occitan journal Lengas, Revue de Sociolinguistique, no. 35, in 1994. 

He coordinated two reports for the European Parliament: firstly, one on the linguistic minorities in six of the enlargement countries, was published as Lesser-used languages in States applying for EU membership (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia) (2001). An electronic version of this report (PDF format) can be accessed. Secondly, he coordinated a report on The European Union and Lesser-Used Languages, which was published in July 2002 (final draft).


He has also written chapters and articles in a considerable number of books. (List of publications).


On several occasions he has been a consultant for the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, for language-policy-related missions to Kazakhstan, Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, the Russian Federation and other countries. He was a member of the drafting teams of the Oslo Recommendations regarding the linguistic rights of national minorities and Explanatory Note (February 1998) and of the Lund Recommendations on the Effective Participation of National Minorities in Public Life and Explanatory Note (Foundation on Inter-Ethnic Relations, September 1999).


He has coordinated a number of European research projects, among which it is worth mentioning the Euromosaic report (1993-1995), the Atlantis observatory (2001-2002),  the ADUM project (2004-2008), the DROFoLTA study (2005-2006) on obstacles to the mobility of foreign language teachers across Europe, and the European Universities Network on Multilingualism (EUNoM), cofounded for a three year project (2009-2012). He was a co-author of another report for the European Commission: Report on the diversity of language teaching offered in the European Union (DiTLang, published in 2007). 


He has sat on the editorial boards of Treballs de Sociolingüística Catalana, Language Policy (2005-2009), the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development and Minorités linguistiques et société /Linguistic Minorities and Society.
 
He is a member of the boards of the Fundació Congrés de Cultura Catalana (which he currently chairs), the Fundació Catalunya - Fons per a la defensa dels drets dels catalans and Linguapax International, and was (2009-2011) coordinator of the new-defunct Observatori de la Llengua Catalana.


He chaired Catalunya 2003, a political association calling for greater self-government for Catalonia and founded by Pere Esteve, from its inception and until it decided to disband (November 2002 - June 2005). 

Since 2007 he has been a member of the board of another platform, Sobirania i Progrés, which vindicates the democratic path towards the freedom of the Catalan people.

He was one of a small group of people who decided, in the autumn of 2009, to design the Assemblea Nacional Catalana, a grassroots organisation working for Catalonia's independence, which grew rapidly, in just two years, to over 30,000 members. It organised both the historic demonstration on September 11 2012, in Barcelona, the equally historic 250 mile-long human chain, the Via Catalana (Catalan Way) exactly a year later, and the 7 mile V-shaped Catalan flag demonstration along the two main avenues in Barcelona on September 11 2014. Similarly spectacular demonstrations were held in 2015 (in Barcelona) and 2016 (in five cities).

He is married, has two sons and a daughter, and his main hobbies are mushroom hunting, listening to classical music and riding his mountain bike (preferably downhill...). He lives in Barcelona and Palamós.

He has two Twitter accounts: @mstrubell (mainly in Catalan) and @mstrubell_EN (mainly in English).

See this selection of papers, mostly by M. Strubell, on the Catalan independence process: http://cv.uoc.edu/~grc0_003638_web/150205_Selection.pdf