Research at the intersection of family, language, identity, well-being, and global mobility.
Worldschooling & global education
How families design learning outside traditional systems while living across borders.
Family language policy
The conscious and unconscious decisions families make about which languages to use, maintain, and pass on.
๐จโ๐ฉโ๐งโ๐ฆ
โถ
Parenting globally conscious kids
How parents nurture identity, belonging, and a global perspective in children growing up between worlds.
Online & offline communities
How communities like this one form, sustain themselves, and create real-world impact.
Happiness & well-being
What makes globally mobile families thrive โ conditions, habits, and connections that sustain joy and resilience.
Roots & Routes
The six-module workbook course โ Dr. Hirsch's research frameworks, translated into practical tools for your family.
๐ Worldschooling & global education
C2G camps offer different language profiles โ and the right fit depends on your family's goals. Nice is a French-English bilingual camp โ a summer of French immersion for English-speaking families, or English consolidation for francophone ones. Hvar's camp is fully English-speaking โ ideal for non-English families seeking immersion, or English-speaking families who want a rich English environment abroad. Braฤ is bilingual, with both English and Croatian. Many families are investing in multiple languages simultaneously. This isn't incidental. It's the pedagogical core of why C2G chose these camps.
Practical tip
The language-rich summer strategy
8 weeks of immersive, joyful exposure to a target language โ through play, camp, and peer connection โ can consolidate months of at-home effort. This is the pedagogical backbone of Community-to-Go's camp model.
Research-informed
Savoring across cultures builds resilience
Teaching children to actively notice and appreciate cross-cultural experiences builds metacognitive awareness and emotional resilience. Journaling, photo rituals, and family storytelling all help โ especially when crossing between languages and countries.
Founder's research
Connected presence over isolated excellence
The pressure to navigate a new school system perfectly can push parents toward anxious solo problem-solving. Research consistently shows that collective wisdom outperforms individual anxiety. Families who troubleshoot together produce more confident, independent children. Hirsch, T. (2017). Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Barbara.
๐ฃ๏ธ Family language policy
Each C2G camp has a distinct language profile. Nice is French-English bilingual โ French immersion for English-speaking families, English immersion for francophone ones. Hvar is fully English-speaking โ an ideal environment for non-English families seeking immersion. Braฤ is bilingual, with English and Croatian. The right camp depends on your family's language goals โ and many families find they're working toward multiple targets simultaneously. The research on why immersive peer-based language exposure works is consistent and striking.
Finding ยท Family Language Policy
Intentionality is the strongest predictor of heritage language maintenance
โFamilies who consciously discuss and plan their language use โ even informally โ are significantly more likely to successfully maintain minority languages across generations. Hirsch, T. (2017). Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Barbara. eScholarship.
Finding ยท Family Language Policy
Academic anxiety around language is the #1 stressor for transnational mothers
โNavigating foreign school systems โ particularly fears around language misclassification, remedial tracks, and misinformation about multilingual development โ is the greatest source of stress for globally mobile mothers. Community knowledge-sharing is one of the most effective antidotes. Kayam, O. & Hirsch, T. (2013). International Journal of Linguistics, 5(1), 320โ331.
Founder's research
Language grief is real โ and underexplored
Many transnational parents experience grief around their children losing fluency in a heritage language. Naming this as a legitimate emotional experience is the first step. Community-to-Go was partly designed as a joyful, structured response to that grief. Hirsch, T. (2017). Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Barbara.
๐จโ๐ฉโ๐งโ๐ฆ Parenting globally conscious kids
Finding ยท Global Kids
Globally mobile childhoods build stronger cross-cultural perspective-taking
โChildren raised across cultures and languages develop measurably stronger perspective-taking abilities and cross-cultural empathy โ particularly when their mobility is framed positively by parents and supported by consistent community. Hirsch, T. (2017). Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Barbara. eScholarship.
Research-informed
Connection is the anchor, not location
Children in globally mobile families show stronger identity formation when they have a consistent community โ even a virtual one โ rather than a stable geography. The quality of relationships matters more than rootedness in place. This is the founding insight behind Community-to-Go.
Founder's research
Negative emotions are data, not failure
Transnational parents often internalize the hard moments as signs they're doing something wrong. Research shows the opposite: families who share and validate these moments within a trusted community build significantly more resilience than those who absorb them alone. Hirsch, T. (2017). Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Barbara.
๐ Happiness & well-being
Finding ยท Well-Being
Digital communities allow selves to migrate ahead of bodies
โIntentional digital communities allow families to build social infrastructure before physically arriving in a new place. When the body lands, the self is not entering a vacuum. This pre-arrival connection is one of the most powerful protective factors against the psychological stress of relocation. Hirsch, T. (2017). Io/fP framework. Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Barbara.
Founder's research
Selves migrate slower than bodies
When a family moves, the body arrives on day one. The self โ the sense of identity, belonging, and ease โ takes much longer. Community-to-Go was designed around this insight: by building social infrastructure before you arrive, your self doesn't enter a vacuum. Hirsch, T. (2017). Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Barbara.
Founder's research
Time famine is real โ and transnational moves make it worse
The cognitive load of newness depletes mental resources faster than almost anything else. "Time famine" โ the feeling that there aren't enough hours, enough energy, enough of you. When someone else has already found the camp, vetted the neighborhood, and knows which ferry to take โ you arrive with bandwidth to spare. That's time affluence. Hirsch, T. (2017). Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Barbara.
Every level of involvement helps. Choose what feels right for you.
Deeper dives into Dr. Hirsch's research areas โ curated guides and resources for multilingual families on the move.
Founder's research
The Internet of/for People (Io/fP)
For most of its history, the internet has been theorized as a tool โ useful, powerful, but instrumental. Dr. Hirsch's research proposes something different: for globally mobile and transnational communities, digital spaces function simultaneously as infrastructure and as social environments. Places where selves exist, relationships form, and belonging is experienced โ not as a substitute for physical community, but as the connective tissue that makes it possible. The Io/fP framework explains why a WhatsApp group does more than coordinate, and why the families who build community before they arrive somewhere land in a place rather than a vacuum. This framework is the theoretical foundation of Community-to-Go.
Hirsch, T. (2017). Doctoral dissertation, UC Santa Barbara.
Read on eScholarship โ
Founder's research
Immigrants vs. Transsettlers โ which are you?
One of Dr. Hirsch's most practically significant contributions is a typology that many globally mobile families describe as immediately clarifying. An immigrant moves with the intention of permanence. A transsettler moves knowing, or strongly expecting, that they will move again โ maintaining ties to multiple locations and approaching language, schooling, and social investment with a fundamentally different temporal orientation. The intended duration of stay is the single strongest predictor of how a family manages language policy, school choices, and identity formation.
Hirsch, T. & Lee, J.S. (2018). Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 39(10), 882โ894.
Read on Taylor & Francis โ
Founder's research
Family Language Policy โ intentionality, grief, and the school system
Language is not just communication for globally mobile families โ it is identity, belonging, and the question of what gets passed on. Dr. Hirsch's research identifies intentionality as the single strongest predictor of heritage language maintenance across generations: families who consciously discuss and plan their language use, even imperfectly, are significantly more likely to sustain their minority languages than those who leave it to chance. The research also names and documents two underexplored dimensions of the family language experience: language grief โ the real and often privately carried loss of watching a heritage language fade in a child โ and the academic anxiety that school systems produce in transnational mothers, particularly around language misclassification, remedial placement, and misinformation about multilingual development. Community knowledge-sharing is one of the most effective antidotes to both.
Read on ResearchGate โ
C2G guide
How Community-to-Go works
How we vote, book, choose camps, and show up โ everything you need to understand and join. The complete guide to the C2G model.
Read the guide โ
C2G guide
Community-to-Go as a living laboratory
How C2G applies Dr. Hirsch's Io/fP research in practice โ pre-arrival social capital, vetted information, and building connected presence before your body arrives.
Read the guide โ
Well-being
Time famine, time affluence, and the transnational move
How pre-arrival community connection transforms the cognitive overwhelm of newness into preserved mental bandwidth โ and why this changes everything.
Read the guide โ
Well-being
Raising resilient multilingual kids
What the research actually shows about identity, empathy, and perspective-taking in children raised across cultures โ and what parents can do to support it.
Read the guide โ
Language & FLP
Heritage language maintenance โ what actually works
The conditions, strategies, and community factors that sustain minority languages across generations โ drawn from Dr. Hirsch's research findings.
Read the guide โ
Language & EdTech
Choosing educational apps for your children โ what the research says
What makes a learning app genuinely educational, how to evaluate quality, and why mobile learning is changing the landscape for globally mobile and worldschooling families.
Read the guide โ
Schools & camps
Navigating foreign school systems as a transnational family
Practical guidance on Home Language Surveys, language placement, and avoiding the remedial track trap โ drawn from research and community experience.
Read the guide โ
Braฤ Field Guide
Braฤ summer camp โ full guide
Session dates, pricing, registration, what to pack, insider tips, and the C2G group discount โ all in the Braฤ Field Guide.
๐ Available in the Braฤ Field Guide โ $49
Listen ยท Research Podcast
How transsettlers plant digital roots
A NotebookLM-generated discussion of Dr. Hirsch's research on how globally mobile families build social infrastructure in digital spaces โ and what happens when those digital roots become physical community.
Generated by NotebookLM from Dr. Hirsch's published research ยท community-to-go.com