On 28 May 2026, Dr Renata Martinčić Marić delivered an online presentation of the international scientific research project Neurocognitive Abilities and Early Bilingual Development: Language Exposure and Executive Functions / Neurokognitivne sposobnosti i rani dvojezični razvoj: jezična izloženost i izvršne funkcije (NeuroLEEF) , led by Dr Nada Poropat Jeletić. The presentation was organized as a continuation of the successful international collaboration established with the Roman school institutions involved in the implementation of the research activities. The meeting was attended by teachers from the Istituto Comprensivo Bruno Munari in Rome, specifically from the Cardinal Massaia/Walt Disney and Pietro Verri school branches, with which collaboration had previously been established during the field research conducted in Rome in April 2026.

From October 2025 to June 2026, field research was conducted in Istria and Rijeka within the framework of the international scientific research project  Neurocognitive Abilities and Early Bilingual Development: Language Exposure and Executive Functions  —  NeuroLEEF , led by Associate Professor Nada Poropat Jeletić director of the Research Centre for the Linguistic and Cultural Heritage of Istria. The project is carried out at Juraj Dobrila University of Pula and is funded by the European Union. The research activities conducted to date have involved the following elementary schools: Giuseppina Martinuzzi Pula-Pola, Edmondo De Amicis Buie-Buje, Kaštanjer Pula, Veruda Pula and Dolac Rijeka. 

As part of the international dissemination activities of the scientific research project  Neurocognitive Abilities and Early Bilingual Development: Language Exposure and Executive Functions  — NeuroLEEF, Dr Renata Martinčić Marić stayed in Lisbon from 12 to 17 May 2026 at the Department of Educational Sciences of ISEC Lisboa University, within the framework of Erasmus international mobility. On this occasion, the NeuroLEEF project was presented to an international academic audience as an interdisciplinary research initiative bringing together cognitive neuroscience, psychology and linguistics. This mobility confirmed the importance of the project as a scientifically relevant and socially responsible research endeavour funded by the European Union. Under the leadership of Associate Professor Nada Poropat Jeletić, the NeuroLEEF project develops an interdisciplinary model for investigating early bilingual development, language exposure and executive functions, while simultaneously strengthening international cooperation, digital research infrastructure, science communication and the transfer of scientific knowledge into educational contexts.

The results of a study on the vitality of the Italian language in Istria County, conducted by Professor Andrea Debeljuh, Dr Loredana Bogliun and Dr Aleksandro Burra, were presented at the Italian Community in Pula. The research provides important insights into the current position of the Italian language in public use and draws attention to the fact that, despite the formally guaranteed status of Italian in the bilingual areas of Istria County, its public presence is not yet fully realised on an equal footing with Croatian. The findings presented indicate that the Italian language in the public space of Istria County is undergoing a process of regression, particularly with regard to its visible, written and oral use within the framework of institutional Croatian-Italian bilingualism. The study is based on the premise that the actual vitality of a language does not depend solely on its formal legal status, but also on the consistent implementation of bilingualism in public institutions, local self-government, education, public-interest companies, administrative communication, public signage and everyday communicative practices. Particular emphasis was placed on the fact that the legal framework regulating the use of Italian derives from international agreements, national legislation and the statutes of Istria County, as well as those of cities and municipalities with bilingual status. However, the study highlights the gap between normatively guaranteed rights and their actual implementation in the public sphere. This gap emerges as one of the key challenges for preserving Italian as a language of the social environment and as a constitutive element of the identity of the autochthonous Italian National Community in Istria.

The members of the Research Centre for the Linguistic and Cultural Heritage of Istria participated in the professional and scientific conference “The linguists of Pula and Istria and their students”, held on 12 May 2026 at the Faculty of Humanities of the “Juraj Dobrila” University of Pula. The conference was organized by the Pula Chair of the Čakavian Assembly and the Faculty of Humanities in Pula, and its programme was devoted to Croatian dialectology, accentology, etymology, and the study of Čakavian and Romance idioms in Istria.

On Monday, 4 May 2026, at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, the institutional research project  Linguistic and Cultural Heritage of Istria (JKBI)  was presented. The project is funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan 2021–2026.

Within the framework of the international scientific research project Neurocognitive Abilities and Early Bilingual Development: Language Exposure and Executive Functions (NeuroLEEF), from the 27th to the 30th April 2026 a field research was conducted in Rome. The research was carried out as part of the activities of the Research Centre for the Linguistic and Cultural Heritage of Istria at the Faculty of Humanities of the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula and involved students from the Istituto comprensivo Munari di Roma: IC Bruno Munari, Cardinal Massaia/Walt Disney branch – primary school; IC Bruno Munari, Pietro Verri branch – lower secondary school (Ministero dell’Istruzione dell’Università e della Ricerca – Ufficio Scolastico Regionale per il Lazio).

On Wednesday, 22 April 2026, as part of the preparatory activities for the implementation of the research to be conducted in Rome ( Istituto comprensivo Munari di Roma ), within the framework of the activities of the Research Centre for the Linguistic and Cultural Heritage of Istria at the Faculty of Humanities of the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Dr Renata Martinčić Marić (Faculty of Educational Sciences of the University of Pula) and Dr Nada Poropat Jeletić (Faculty of Humanities of the University of Pula) delivered an online specialised workshop dedicated to the testing methodology that will be employed at the Roman research site. The workshop was aimed at the precise alignment of research procedures, the standardisation of administration and the planning of assessment protocols in order to ensure the methodological consistency and comparability of the data collected within the international scientific research project Neurocognitive Abilities and Early Bilingual Development: Language Exposure and Executive Functions (NeuroLEEF).

On Monday, 30 March 2026, within the activities of the Research Centre for the Linguistic and Cultural Heritage of Istria at the Faculty of Humanities of the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Dr. Sara Košutar (UiT The Arctic University of Norway) held an online specialised workshop entitled  “Coding Principles in the CHAT System within the CLAN Program”.

The international postdoctoral researcher Dr. Sara Košutar, affiliated with the Department of Language and Culture at the Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education of UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø (Norway), has undertaken a research stay at the Research Centre for the Linguistic and Cultural Heritage of Istria at the Faculty of Humanities in Pula from 4 February 2026 to 6 March 2026, within the field research activities of the project Cross-linguistic Influence during Real-time Processing in Child Heritage Speakers – CLEAR (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01-101154247).

The Research Centre for the Linguistic and Cultural Heritage of Istria hereby informs the scientific community and the interested public of the publication of  The Istriot Corpus , a digital language corpus dedicated to the Istriot dialect, one of the most endangered Istroromance idioms within the European linguistic landscape. The corpus is publicly available through the international research platform  TalkBank , widely recognised as one of the world’s leading infrastructures for the study of spoken language, language development and discourse practices. The development of the corpus was carried out within the framework of the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ) project  Multidisciplinary Approaches to Linguistic and Cultural Heritage (MULTIDIS) .

The Research Centre for the Linguistic and Cultural Heritage of Istria is pleased to inform the scientific community and the wider public that the  C-ORAL-IC corpus (Corpus of Oral Istrovenetian and Croatian)  has been successfully completed and published in the international research repository  TalkBank , one of the world’s leading infrastructures for the study of spoken language, language development and discourse. The corpus was developed within the framework of the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ) project  Multidisciplinary Approaches to Linguistic and Cultural Heritage (MULTIDIS) .