The UPSKILLS project is an Erasmus+ strategic partnership in the EU for higher education that seeks to identify and tackle the gaps and mismatches in skills for linguistics and language students through the development of a new curriculum component and supporting materials to be embedded in existing programmes of study.
The recent UPSKILLS needs analysis (via survey) explored the current academic offer in language- and linguistics-related fields (modern languages and cultures, translation, general linguistics, etc.) and the requirements the job market has for graduates in these areas. The analysis highlighted the need for a new skill set and a new mind frame to meet the demands as well as the professional challenges of the industry. Taking into consideration the results of the individual components of the needs analysis, in this talk, I will outline a new professional profile, that of the language data and project specialist, and describe the knowledge, skills and competences that present-day and future graduates in languages and linguistics should obtain in order to improve their employability in the digital business sector.
Presenter: Stavros Assimakopoulos (University of Malta)