Jon Bilbao Chair 2026: Ander Beristain

Ander Beristain will be this year’s guest researcher at the Jon Bilbao Chair, promoted by Etxepare Basque Institute at the University of Nevada, Reno. During his research residency in the United States, he will examine language development, acquisition and intergenerational transmission among children and adults in the context of the Basque diaspora in North America.

Ander Beristain (Azpeitia, 1993) holds a PhD in Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2022). He is currently Associate Professor of Linguistics at Saint Louis University (USA) and Academic Coordinator of the university’s Prison Education Program. His research focuses on phonology and phonetics, particularly from the perspective of the acquisition of minoritized languages, second languages and heritage languages.

Throughout his academic career, he has contributed to the editing of a collective volume, published a phonological dictionary of the Basque spoken in Azpeitia, and authored several academic articles and book chapters.
The main objective of his research stay at the Jon Bilbao Chair is to examine language development, acquisition and transmission in the context of the Basque diaspora in North America. To this end, the research will explore the influence of linguistic input, interpersonal relationships and social networks, as well as their impact on language cognition and production.

The first phase of the project will take place in Reno (Nevada) and Boise (Idaho), where the speech of Basque speakers from older generations, their descendants and learners of Basque will be analysed, allowing previously created databases to be updated. Research will also be conducted at the Boise Ikastola to examine children’s acquisition of Basque, comparing children for whom Basque is a heritage language with those for whom it is not. The second phase of the project, to be carried out at a later stage, will focus on the Basque diaspora in Argentina.

During his stay, Beristain will give two lectures: the first, in Boise, will address the importance of maintaining heritage languages and the benefits of immersion education; the second will take place at the Center for Basque Studies in Reno and will focus on the impact of migration on language development.

Jon Bilbao Chair

Created in 2014, the purpose of this Chair is to promote international research and knowledge about the Basque diaspora and culture. The Chair has created the Jon Bilbao Visiting Research Fellow, a research grant awarded to a visiting professor, renewable yearly or every other year. The fellow is based at the Center for Basque Studies, the leading research and educational institute on the Basque diaspora in the USA. One of its missions is to conduct Basque research and disseminate the results internationally.