2nd Annual Event

Dear all

Following its postponement earlier this year, we are delighted to announce the 2nd Annual Event of the BAAL Multilingualism SIG, which will take place via Blackboard Collaborate from 13:00 to 16:30 on Wednesday 3 February 2021.

Featuring Joanna McPake from the University of Strathclyde and Philip McDermott from Ulster University as invited speakers, the theme of the event is Multilingualism in the UK in the post-Brexit climate. Our aim is to showcase projects that illustrate the rich linguistic diversity of the UK, while providing opportunities to explore how this richness might be promoted to benefit society in the post-Brexit climate.

In an inclusive spirit, we encourage participants to submit a poster on a current project on multilingualism, which will be displayed virtually in the lead in to and during the event.

The event will close with the SIG AGM.

The programme is as follows:  

13.00	Welcome by the SIG Committee
13.15	Virtual poster sessions
	Poster session 1  Chairs: Salman Al-Azami, Alexandra Georgiou  Presenters: Rabeya Binte Habib: Do, and to what extent, the generation z in Bangladesh know that we have people speaking other languages, too?  Katie Harrison: Researching linguistic diversity in diasporic contexts Petros Karatsareas: Negotiating ethnolinguistic heterogeneity in Greek complementary schools post 2010  Sabine Little: ‘Lost wor(l)ds: using nature to bridge children’s home/school Divide   Diane Potts: (title tbc)	Poster session 2  Chairs: Froso Argyri, Barbara Mayor, Siân Preece  Presenters:  María Fernández-Toro and Lina Adinolfi: A multilingual Decameron: students’ stories of a different world  Faidra Faitaki: Greek children’s acquisition of English in monolingual and bilingual immersion preschools  Dobrochna Futro: Translanguaging Art  Jiayin Zheng: The impact of second language proficiency and language switching practice on Chinese-English bilinguals’ executive functions
14.15	Break
14.30	Plenary session: Joanna McPake and Philip McDermott in conversationChair: Barbara Mayor
15.15	Round table discussionChair: Alexandra Georgiou
15.45	Break
16.00	SIG AGMChairs: Petros Karatsareas and Siân Preece (SIG Co-convenors)
16.30	End

The event will take place on Blackboard Collaborate. Joining instructions will be sent out to all registered attendees on 2 February. If you have not already registered for the event, please do so by filling in the following form by 1 February at the very latest:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1NIRGO8NfU3QE8yA2S3yEwiXZ33FFv7NaMSW_kSg1BJ4/

POSTERS

Posters will be available after 25 January on the Google Drive folder that can be accessed here: 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1022rDivd2o0MckCS2yCaY7KdNLZqAO_U?usp=sharing

All participants are encouraged to peruse posters ahead of the event and formulate questions and comments for poster presenters.

AGM

All members of the SIG Committee are reaching the end of their two-year term and are standing for re-election. The Committee consists of the following positions:

• (Co-)Convenor(s)
• Treasurer
• Events Coordinator
• Membership and Communications Secretary
• Ordinary Member
• Ordinary Member

We welcome nominations and self-nominations for the above positions. Nominees for the (co-)convenor and treasurer positions must be members of BAAL. This is not required for the other positions. (Self-)nominations must be sent to the Co-Convenors via email (P.Karatsareas@westminster.ac.uk, sian.preece@ucl.ac.uk) by 13 January 2021. They must consist of the nominees’ details (full name, contact details, position and affiliation – if applicable) and a brief statement outlining their reasons for wanting to join the Committee and what they can contribute to the running of the SIG (no more than 200 words).

Only members of the SIG will be able to vote in the event that elections are held at the AGM.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.

We look forward very much to welcoming you to our event.

The SIG Committee
Petros Karatsareas (Co-convenor)
Siân Preece (Co-convenor)
Lina Adinolfi
Salman Al-Azami
Froso Argyri
Alexandra Georgiou
Barbara Mayor

Guest speakers’ bios

Joanna McPake

Joanna McPake is a Reader in Education at the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow). She has long-standing interests in theory, policy and pedagogy relating to bi- or plurilingualism in individuals and multilingualism in classrooms and communities. Her recent research has focused on teacher education for the Gaelic-medium sector, and on the transformational power of local language encounters for primary pupils.

Philip McDermott

Dr Philip McDermott is a senior lecturer in sociology at Ulster University. Philip’s research focuses on the relationship between the state and minority groups – especially linguistic minorities. A focus has been in the area of language policy and planning for (and by) migrant communities. He has a specific interest in the perception of migrant languages in public places, the ways that government and communities deal with such linguistic diversity and the manner in which multilingualism and bilingualism are dealt with in policy contexts. Philip was a Charlemont scholar of the Royal Irish Academy in 2015 and currently acts as co-editor for the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures and the Irish Journal of Sociology.