Elke Montanari

Prof. Dr. Elke Montanari is a Professor of German as a Second Language at the Institute for German Language and Literature, University of Hildesheim, where she also serves as Managing Director. She holds a PhD from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and previously held academic positions at Heidelberg University of Education and Karlsruhe University of Education. Her research bridges multilingualism, language acquisition, and educational integration, with leadership roles in projects like TRANSLANG (international teacher education) and DAWID (German as an academic language).

Montanari's research explores multilingual education systems, vocabulary development in bilingual children, and diagnostics for German language learners. She emphasizes practical applications in teacher training and policy development, particularly for migrant and refugee education. Her work spans early childhood to tertiary education contexts.

Recent publications (2019–2025) demonstrate strong trends in lexical analysis of learner corpora, multilingual pedagogy in ECEC institutions, and information literacy’s role in democratic engagement. Methodologically, she combines empirical studies of bilingual development with applied educational research.

As primary supervisor, she guides doctoral candidates in multilingual acquisition research. Key projects include SpraBiPiKs (language professionals in kindergartens) and collaborations with universities in Cairo and Rouen. She co-leads the Center for Educational Integration, advancing inclusive language policies across Niedersachsen.