AFinLA 50th Anniversary Symposium on 11-13 November 2021: Call for Papers

Jyväskylä
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Welcome to the 50th anniversary symposium of the Finnish Association for Applied Linguistics (AFinLA) in Jyväskylä on 11-13 November 2021.The theme of the symposium Language, change and society invites explorations on the role and trajectories of applied language studies from the past to the future. The symposium offers a forum to reflect on how societal changes such as increasing diversity, multilingualism and technologisation challenge applied language studies and what insights research can offer to solve societally relevant issues. What kind of theoretical approaches, methodological openings and forms of interdisciplinary collaboration are needed in applied language studies? What kind of language skills and multiliteracies does participation in current society demand and what kind of research should be used to address them?

The symposium will be organised by the Language Campus, a joint venture by the units at the University of Jyväskylä with language-related research and teaching. The programme will include keynote presentations, expert panels, thematic symposia and individual papers. We aim at arranging the symposium as a physical face to face event. Part of the programme will be open to online participation.

The symposium programme includes these invited presentations and roundtable discussions:

11.11.2021

Patricia Duff (The University of British Columbia): Changing directions and themes in applied linguistics research from a North American perspective

Roundtable: History and present trends of applied linguistics — views from journal editors (the participants are editors of applied linguistics journals from Finland and abroad, including Anna Mauranen, Helen Kelly Holmes, Li Wei and Taina Saarinen)

12.11.2021

Tarja Nikula-Jäntti, Anne Pitkänen-Huhta ja Mirja Tarnanen (Jyväskylän yliopisto): Developing the field of applied language studies through profiling

Roundtable: discussing and sharing experiences about the RECLAS and MultiLEAP profiling areas at the University of Jyväskylä (the participants are researchers working in the two areas and their international collaborators, including Sigurd d’Hondt, Sari Sulkunen, Srikant Sarangi, Sue Wright, and Alastair Pennycook; for more information about the profiling initiatives, see https://www.jyu.fi/reclas/en and https://multileap.org/)

Roundtable (in Finnish): Themes from AFinLA’s first decades (the participants are AFinLA’s past presidents and honorary members)

13.11.2021

Minna Suni (University of Jyväskylä): (in Finnish) Morfeemeista monikielisyyteen: Kielenoppimisen tutkimuksen käänteitä ja suuntia [From morphemes to multilingualism: Turns and directions in research on language learning]

Participation in the invited events described above can be either virtual or on-site in Jyväskylä.

Types of presentations

The symposium consists of individual presentations (on completed or in-progress research) and thematic workshops. These may be held in Finnish, English or Swedish. Other languages are possible, but they should be confirmed with the organisers in advance. Abstracts should be written in the language of the presentation.

Individual presentations

Presentations can be given either on a completed study or on research in progress; the type of presentation need to be indicated when submitting the proposal. Both types of individual presentation will be allocated 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes of discussion. We invite abstracts of up to 300 words, including references.

Thematic workshops

Thematic workshops will be either 90 or 180 minutes long and they will include several thematically connected presentations. The time allotted for a single presentation is 20 minutes.

The convenors of a workshop are asked to submit a description of the theme of the workshop (max 500 words). The description should include a list of the contributors and the titles of their presentations in the order in which the presentations will be given. All workshop contributors are required to submit individual abstracts, following the guidelines for individual presentations. Each abstract must indicate the name of the workshop it belongs to.

AFinLA Yearbook 2022

Those who present a paper at the AFinLA anniversary symposium may submit an article to the AFinLA yearbook. The yearbook has a Publication Forum rating of 1, and it is an open access publication (available at: http://journal.fi/afinlavk). Article manuscripts can be based on any type of presentation (individual paper, workshop paper) given at the symposium, but they need to be related to the theme of the symposium. Further instructions for publishing in the yearbook will be provided after the symposium.

Important dates

Proposals for presentations and workshops must be submitted on October 3, 2021 at the latest at https://registration.contio.fi/jyu/Registration/Login?id=2066-KONG_SOLKI-1152.

Acceptance of proposals will be announced on October 15.

The final deadline for registration and payment of the symposium fees is October 24.

Registration fees

  • AFinLA members 100 euros
  • Students 40 euros
  • Other participants 120 euros

Other important information

Please note that the presenters at the AFinLA Autumn Symposium must be members of either AFinLA or other affiliate organisations of AILA. If a presentation or a poster is a collaboration of many authors, at least one of the authors must be a member. For information on how to become a member of AFinLA, please visit AFinLA’s website.

If your presentation relates to any of the AFinLA research networks, please indicate this in your registration information. This information is necessary for the planning of the programme and will not affect the evaluation of the abstract. More information on the AFinLA research networks.

We look forward to seeing you in Jyväskylä!

You can e-mail the organisers at      .