‘Multilingualism and Families’ Academic Conferenceand Emerging Scholars’ Workshop

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The‘Multilingualism and Families’ Academic Conference and Emerging Scholars’ Workshop is a scholarly event that situates language policy research in the state-of-the-art development of China’s Belt and Road (B&R) initiative. In response to the China’s developmental strategy, it is important to promote the learning and teaching of multiple foreign languages in the country’s educational system. Meanwhile, with China’s deepening engagement in the globalization process, Chinese families are moving around globally. This brings up some burgeoning issues that need to be addressed by Chinese language policy researchers: A large number of families will face linguistic challenges posed by the multilingual world. These issues highlight the necessity of family language planning and family language policy in China as well as relevant research.

To better explore and study the multilingual challenges that our educational system and families are faced with, our Conference and Workshop invites renowned international scholars to join the dialogue with Chinese academics. The Conference and Workshop is hosted by the School of Foreign Languages and Literature and the National Institute of Chinese Language Matters and Social Development, Wuhan University. Our focus is on practical issues in research methods and paradigms that emerge from real-life cases.Through intellectual exchanges, the Conference encourages responses from multiple perspectives to these issues. The Workshop aims to bring an opportunity to emerging scholars to have productive conversations with established academics in language policy, sociolinguistics, education and other relevant disciplines.

The Conference and Workshop is now calling for abstracts in either Chinese or English. Abstracts must be submitted before the deadline of 23^rdMarch 2018 (Friday), 23:59 Beijing Standard Time.Topics of proposals should be relevant to the theme of the Conference.

Conference themes:

1. Methodology in studies on family language policy

2. State-of-the-art review of family language policy research in China

3. Multilingualism and society

4. Multilingualism and education

5. Multilingualism and language policy research

6. Multilingualism and monolingualism

Time:

■June 22^nd, 2018 (Friday)14:30-17:00 (Research methods training workshop)

■June 23^rd, 2018 (Saturday) 8:30-17:30

■June 24^th, 2018 (Sunday) 8:30-12:00

Venue: Luojia Hill Campus, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei

Keynote Speakers

Prof. CURDT-CHRISTIANSEN, Xiao Lan (University of Bath, United Kingdom)

Prof. EDWARDS, John (St. Francis Xavier University, Canada)

Prof. LANZA, Elizabeth (University of Oslo, Norway)

Prof. LI,Yuming (Beijing Language and Culture University)

Prof. ZHAO,Shiju (Wuhan University)

Prof. LI,Yaling (South China Normal University)

Dr. GAO, Xuesong Andy (The University of New South Wales, Australia)

Dr. GU, Mingyue Michelle (The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR China)

Medium of presentation: Chinese or English

Target participants: academics and research postgraduate students in applied linguistics, education, political science, cultural studies, etc.

Registration fee: 800 CNY

Student registration fee:400 CNY(Please provide a copy of your student card or other supporting documents)

A certificate will be issued by Wuhan University to every paid participant.

Please download the enrollment form from http://fls.whu.edu.cn/admin.php/index/view/aid/1755.html and email the completed form to multilingualism@hotmail.com before the deadline. Acknowledge of receipt will be sent to you normally within a week. Please do not send any attachment apart from the enrollment form.

For inquiries: multilingualism@hotmail.com (Mr. SHAO, Qing)

Person-in-charge: Dr. GAO, Xuesong Andy, Associate Professor at The University of New South Wales, Australia（xuesong.gao@unsw.edu.au）