Herewith we warmly invite you to the international conference: ‘Languages of the Wider World: Understanding Resilience and Shift in Regional and Minority languages’, which is going to take place on Wednesday-Friday 6-8 April in the charming city of Leeuwarden, the capital of the bilingual province Fryslân (Netherlands). This is the second international conference organised jointly by the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning of the Fryske Akademy (The Netherlands) and the SOAS-UCL Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning ‘Languages of the Wider World’ (LWW CETL-UK).

The conference will focus on theoretical and empirical work in research, teaching and learning of languages variously labelled as ‘regional’, ‘minority’, ‘immigrant’, ‘community’, ‘heritage’ languages, etc. worldwide. Researchers and practitioners from the various fields will define, analyse and explore new directions and paradigms in understanding resilience and shift of regional and minority languages.

We invite not only researchers and students, but also policy makers, practitioners and interested others to the conference that aims to provide opportunities for discussion, further research and future collaborations.

Keynote Speakers:
• Richard Bourhis, Professor of Social Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
• Ofelia Garcia, Professor of Urban Education, The City University of New York, USA
• Waldemar Martyniuk, Executive Director, The European Centre for Modern Languages, Graz, Austria
• Ann Pauwels, Professor of Sociolinguistics, SOAS, University of London, UK
• Miquel Strubell, director of Linguamón-U.O.C. Chair in Multilingualism, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

For more information, the conference programme, hotel information, etcetera please visit our website. Registration is possible via this website until 20 March.

Hopefully see you soon in Friesland/Fryslân!

With kindest regards,

Itesh Sachdev, SOAS-UCL
Cor van der Meer, Mercator – Fryske Akademy

Font: Mercator