Aina Moll

Aina Moll graduated in Romance Philology at the University of Barcelona. She is a member of the Institute of Catalan Studies (Philological Section) and holds a chair in French at the Institute Joan Alcover in Palma. She collaborated in the Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear (10 volumes) started in 1900 and completed in 1962 that has become an indispensable work of reference for Catalan philology. She also carried out linguistic surveys for the Atlas Lingüístic de la Península Ibérica and has been director of the collections of the Moll publishing company. She is the author of the book La nostra llengua and has published hundreds of articles on the Catalan language and language planning. Aina Moll was Head of Language Policy of the Government of Catalonia (1980-88) that prepared the first Law on Language Policy of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia and coordinated the Language Planning Campaign in the Balearic Islands (1990-1995). She was a founder member of the Balearic Cultural Work (Obra Cultural Balear), member of the Social Council for the Catalan Language and coordinated area 1 of the Second International Congress on the Catalan Language. She has been awarded the Cross of Saint George of the Generalitat of Catalonia (1988) and the Ramon Llull award of the Government of the Balearic Islands (1997).

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas is Finnish, with doctorates from the Universities of Helsinki and Roskilde, Denmark. She is a prolific author on bilingualism, minority education, linguistic human rights, and many aspects of language policy. Her publications have been translated into 17 languages. Her most significant recent book is Linguistic genocide in education – or worldwide diversity and human rights? (2000). Tove Skutnabb-Kangas is Vice-President of Terralingua, Partnerships for Linguistic and Biological Diversity, whom she represented at the UN summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002. She has worked as a consultant for UNESCO, for whom she wrote Sharing a world of difference. The earth’s linguistic, cultural and biological diversity, to be published in six languages in 2003. She has lectured worldwide, and collaborated with the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities in preparing The Hague Recommendations regarding the education rights of national minorities (1997). She works actively with many minority language groups.