Laura Koelma

Laura Koelma is a Researcher at Utrecht University's Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, serving as Fieldwork Coordinator for the NWO Vici project "Children and Language Mixing: developmental, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic aspects (CALM)" led by Prof. Dr. Elma Blom (2020-2025).

Her academic qualifications include:

• Bachelor of Social Educational Care, Windesheim University of Applied Sciences (2017)
• Master of Science in Psychology, London Metropolitan University (2021, with Distinction)

Prior nanny experience with multilingual families in London ignited her research focus on language acquisition and cognitive development in multilingual children.

Her work centers on multilingualism in child development, examining how children process mixed-language input, cognitive mechanisms of language mixing, and implications for developmental language disorders. This builds directly on her Master's thesis investigating fast mapping in monolingual and bilingual adults.

Funded by an NWO Vici grant, the CALM project involves close collaboration with Prof. Blom's research team. As Fieldwork Coordinator, Koelma manages data collection and participant coordination across this longitudinal study of language mixing in bilingual children.