Transatlantic collaborations, heading for Quebec

Cet article est tiré de la rubrique "Far Away" du magazine Omalius de septembre 2024.

For several years, Laurence Mettewie, a professor in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, has been interested in languages, multilingualism and language policies. Her research, although mainly conducted in Belgium, also extends to Quebec, with a view to comparing the two countries. Belgium, with its French- and Dutch-speaking regions, and Canada, with its English- and French-speaking provinces, offer rich and varied contexts for the study of multilingualism.

In Montreal, a multilingual city, the linguistic landscape is highly regulated, notably under Bill 101. This implies that signage must be predominantly in French. With her colleague Patricia Lamarre, she pointed out several bilingual winks, such as store names that play with the legislation. These include the "Chouchou" boutique, which sells shoes ("Shoe" in English means "shoe"), and the "T&biscuit" store, which can be read in both French (thé et cookie) and English (tea and cookie). "In Brussels, in the early 2000s, the same kind of creative and disruptive phenomenon appeared, even though the legislation only applied to official bodies," points out Laurence Mettewie. "The names Bozar (for Palais des Beaux Arts-Paleis voor Schone Kunsten), Bootik or Cinematek, for example, arrived on the Brussels linguistic scene, not without a stir. In our research, we compared these mechanisms and, above all, their perception by the citizens of Brussels and Quebec: do they perceive these multilingual winks? How are they decoded? Do they find them scandalous, or delightful and ingenious? It's through the linguistic landscape that relations between communities are revealed," concludes Laurence Mettewie.

Ilias Vierendeels, a doctoral student in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, looks at parliamentary discourses on language learning and linguistic ideologies. "In Belgium, the question of making Dutch the compulsory first modern language in Francophone education in Wallonia has been raised for several decades", recalls Ilias Vierendeels. "These aspects are interesting to compare with the Canadian situation: do we observe similar political dynamics and linguistic ideologies? What is comparable, in any case, is the level of symbolism surrounding linguistic issues, particularly at the political and economic levels. In Canada, as in Belgium, we are sometimes confronted with national groups that present themselves as "fragile majorities", majorities that sometimes feel minoritized."

In August 2024, Ilias Vierendeels will fly to Canada, where he will join his colleague Rémi Léger, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University. Objective: to deepen his research on the Belgian context by comparing it with language policies in Canada, both at the national level and at the level of French-speaking minorities in British Columbia.

In the Department of Physics, Professor Laurent Houssiau has been collaborating with Quebec for almost 11 years, notably through Wallonie Bruxelles International (WBI) programs. Most recently, in 2022, he was awarded a bilateral collaborative research project funded by the FNRS and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec (FNRS-FRQ). For this project, which he is conducting jointly with Professor Diego Mantovani of Université de Laval, he is focusing on the design and development of new multifunctional thin overlays aimed at improving the clinical performance of dental implants. "Currently, 20% of patients with dental implants experience complications such as infection or rejection," explains Laurent Houssiau. "Our aim is to develop implants that are both antibacterial and osseointegrating, i.e. capable of promoting the formation of healthy bone tissue. To achieve this, we use plasma treatment, an ionized gas. This is a technique we already use in the LISE and LARN laboratories at UNamur, which enables us to modify the surface of bodies by depositing multifunctional coatings. The titanium implants were chosen for their biocompatibility and bone-like mechanical properties. They consist of two parts: the abutment and the screw. The abutment is coated in Quebec with a carbon layer containing zinc oxide for long-term antibacterial efficacy. The screw is coated in Namur with an innovative composition gradient layer, combining a titanium oxide coating evolving to a porous carbon-rich surface, and zinc oxide for short- and medium-term antibacterial effect."

This interdisciplinary project between UNamur and ULaval involves physicists, chemists and biologists from both countries. "One of the next phases of the project will be biological characterization. The idea will be to test the new deposits under in vitro conditions using reactors, in order to verify the biocompatibility and hemocompatibility of the materials produced. These tests will be carried out in the Laval laboratories," concludes the researcher.