CARLA Presentation: From Somali Lullabies to Language Survival in the Diaspora: A Project in Culture and Language Learning and Teaching

This project focuses on Sing Again, a highly publicized and celebrated Somali/English bilingual collection of Somali lullabies, with recordings collected from our local Somali communities. This is a community-engaged collaboration led by Marian Hassan, with collaboration from the University of Minnesota. This project transforms culturally rich oral lullabies into interactive, multilingual resources that promote early language development and language preservation in community and classroom settings. 

Presenters
Marian Hassan (author, community partner) is the leader of Sing Again and author of well-known bilingual books such as Dhegdheer, and Cross Roads: An anthology of resilience and hope by young Somali writers. She is an educator and promoter of heritage language learning in the Somali Diaspora.
Martha Bigelow is a faculty member in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota. She is a teacher and scholar in language education, refugee and immigrant youth, and community-engaged research.
Mohammad Naghavian is a PhD student in Multilingual Education and serves as a research assistant on this project. He supports the project’s research coordination, documentation, and academic integration, helping bridge community knowledge with scholarly goals.