Professor Raffaella Folli is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy since 2023 and Research Director for Unit 26. She studied Philosophy at the University of Milan where she completed a BA in 1995. In 1998 she completed an MPhil in Linguistics at the University of Oxford and in 2001 a DPhil in Linguistics, also at the University of Oxford. She joined Ulster University in 2005 having previously held research positions at the University of Arizona and then the University of Cambridge.Her main research area is theoretical syntax. Her standing in linguistics is evidenced by her extensive publications in top journals in the field, various grants from different research councils and extensive collaborations with academics in the UK and the US. In 2011 she was awarded a Distinguished Research Fellowship award in recognition of her research achievements. In 2023 she was the recepient of the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Social Science Senior Distinguished Research Fellowship Award. Raffaella is part of the linguistics team that in 2012 established the Ulster Centre on Multilingualism (UCoM), an information service for people raising or working with children growing up with more than one language. As part of UCoM, she is involved in Language Made Fun, a programme designed to support the language needs of multilingual children or migrant children in Northern Ireland. It is delivered in collaboration with Barnardo’s and funded by a grant from the Big Lottery Fund.