diff --git a/CITATION.cff b/CITATION.cff
index d0ad70af0..0effc3793 100644
--- a/CITATION.cff
+++ b/CITATION.cff
@@ -155,6 +155,9 @@ authors:
       family-names: Gerster
       affiliation: 'Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany'
       orcid: 'https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9343-6986'
+    - given-names: Fesselier
+      family-names: Laetitia
+      affiliation: 'McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, McGill University, Montreal, Canada'
     - given-names: Alexandre
       family-names: Gramfort
       affiliation: 'Université Paris-Saclay, Inria, CEA, Palaiseau, France'
diff --git a/doc/authors.rst b/doc/authors.rst
index c9d454e88..4a046d1ae 100644
--- a/doc/authors.rst
+++ b/doc/authors.rst
@@ -40,3 +40,4 @@
 .. _Bruno Hebling Vieira: https://bhvieira.github.io/
 .. _Daniel McCloy: http://dan.mccloy.info
 .. _Moritz Gerster: http://moritz-gerster.com
+.. _Laetitia Fesselier: https://github.com/laemtl
diff --git a/doc/whats_new.rst b/doc/whats_new.rst
index cd08f31ac..c7ae42a7a 100644
--- a/doc/whats_new.rst
+++ b/doc/whats_new.rst
@@ -52,6 +52,7 @@ Detailed list of changes
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
 - Amending a dataset now works in cases where the newly-written data contains additional participant properties (new columns in ``participants.tsv``) not found in the existing dataset, by `Richard Höchenberger`_ (:gh:`1113`)
+- Fixes :func:`~mne_bids.copyfiles.copyfile_eeglab` to prevent data type conversion leading to an ``eeg_checkset`` failure when trying to load the file in EEGLAB, by `Laetitia Fesselier`_ (:gh:`1122`)
 
 :doc:`Find out what was new in previous releases <whats_new_previous_releases>`
 
diff --git a/mne_bids/copyfiles.py b/mne_bids/copyfiles.py
index 8da9b707e..ed11eefed 100644
--- a/mne_bids/copyfiles.py
+++ b/mne_bids/copyfiles.py
@@ -533,18 +533,19 @@ def copyfile_eeglab(src, dest):
     # structure and potentially breaks re-reading of the file
     uint16_codec = None
     eeg = loadmat(file_name=src, simplify_cells=False,
-                  appendmat=False, uint16_codec=uint16_codec)
+                  appendmat=False, uint16_codec=uint16_codec, mat_dtype=True)
     oldstyle = False
     if 'EEG' in eeg:
         eeg = eeg['EEG']
         oldstyle = True
 
+    has_fdt_link = False
     try:
         # If the data field is a string, it points to a .fdt file in src dir
         if isinstance(eeg['data'][0, 0][0], str):
             has_fdt_link = True
     except IndexError:
-        has_fdt_link = False
+        pass
 
     if has_fdt_link:
         fdt_fname = eeg['data'][0, 0][0]