Coordinated by Prof. Jekaterina Nikitina (University of Milan), the THELMA+ project brought together researchers from the University of Milan, Charles University, the University of Geneva, and the University of Warsaw to investigate how specialised health and legal information is communicated, translated, and simplified across multilingual and multicultural settings.
The final conference fostered a dialogue between researchers from the four partner universities and healthcare professionals, institutional actors, and representatives of civil society to discuss multilingual communication, accessibility, equitable access to health information, and socio-legal rights.
More information on the THELMA+ final conference can be found here.
As part of the project, the interdisciplinary THELMA+ research team also devised communication guidelines to provide practical guidance on overcoming linguistic and sociocultural barriers to accessing health and legal services for marginalised groups, which will be soon disseminated.
“One message came through particularly strongly: accessibility and access go hand in hand, including translation, plain language, but also champions and ambassadors. It depends on who communicates, through which channels, to whom, and with what degree of trust, cultural awareness and understanding of people’s actual needs."
“THELMA+ has fostered valuable interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers across the 4EU+ Alliance, healthcare and legal professionals, public institutions and civil society organisations. The dialogue between these perspectives has been particularly meaningful in connecting linguistic research with real-world challenges in multilingual health and legal communication. Above all, it has highlighted the importance of recognising marginalised communities as active participants in developing and evaluating multilingual information resources, with their needs and perspectives informing the process from the outset.”
“The conference brought together experts from a range of different fields to discuss various aspects of one central message: promoting linguistic accessibility means focusing on the user.”
"Proud to have been part of the THELMA+ project! A truly interdisciplinary journey, bringing together different perspectives, expertise and languages to explore how accessibility and inclusion can be strengthened in health and legal communication. From different angles to one shared goal: making communication more inclusive and accessible to all.”
"Translation matters! There is no real access without translation. In THELMA+, we focused on what people actually need in healthcare and legal settings— clear, actionable information and materials they can use in practice. It was a great experience collaborating across our 4EU+ partners on this."
About SEED4EU+
SEED4EU+ is an initiative launched by the 4EU+ European University Alliance to support out-of-the-box collaborative projects that advance the Alliance’s mission of building One Comprehensive Research-Intensive European University. THELMA+ is one of the projects selected in the third edition of the initiative (a.y. 2025/26).