Dr Phyllisienne Vassallo Gauci is a Resident Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Inclusion and Access to Learning within the Faculty of Education. She teaches courses related to language teaching and learning, language diversity in the classroom, multilingualism and language awareness. She obtained her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Verona in 2012.
Before joining the University of Malta, Dr Vassallo Gauci worked for many years as a language educator in a range of educational settings, including secondary and post-secondary schools and the Migrant Learners’ Unit. In 2014, she was appointed Local Curriculum Development Expert for the Languages Learning Area within the Learning Outcomes Framework Project (ESF 1.228). In 2016, she coordinated the national campaign for the promotion of foreign language learning in Malta. In 2019, she co-developed the Maltese-language component of the 'I Belong' Programme, Malta’s national integration programme, for the Ministry for European Affairs and Equality. The initiative formed part of Malta’s Migrant Integration Strategy and Action Plan 2020. She currently serves as a Training and Consultancy Expert for the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) of the Council of Europe, as part of its Language Education at the Heart of Democracy programme (2024–2027).
Dr Vassallo Gauci has participated in several international projects focusing on plurilingual education, multilingualism and language mediation. These include Mediation in Teaching, Learning and Assessment (METLA, 2020–2023), an ECML project, and Develop and Realise Empowering Actions for Mentoring Migrants (DREAMM, 2021–2023), funded by the European Union’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.
Dr Vassallo Gauci has been invited to serve as a peer reviewer for several academic journals, including Instructed Second Language Acquisition; the EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages; the Journal of Mediterranean Studies and; Studi Italiani di Linguistica Teorica e Applicata. In 2025 she was Visiting Lecturer at KU Leuven in Belgium.
