Keynote presentations
Diane Larsen-Freeman
Diane Larsen-Freeman (Diane Larsen-Freeman is a Professor Emerita in Education and in Linguistics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania). Diane has been a leading figure in the world of Applied Linguistics for many decades. Her interests range from language pedagogy to grammaring and to the role of Complex Dynamic Systems in Second Language Development. She has published widely in articles and books and is cited extensively. For the Groningen AILA2021 organizers she was the obvious choice for the opening address!
Carmen Munoz
Carmen Munoz (University of Barcelona, Spain)
Carmen is a leading and well-respected figure in AL in the European context. Her research interests include the effects of age and context on second language acquisition, young learners in instructed settings, individual differences, and bilingual/multilingual education. Her topic will be out-of-school learning and the potential of multimodal input (i.e. captions and subtitles) for language learning.
Qiufang Wen
Qiufang Wen (Beijing Foreign Studies University, China)
Qiufang Wen is regarded as the leading figure in AL in China. She is currently Vice-President of the China Association for Comparative Studies of English and Chinese and Vice-president of AsiaTEFL. Her research interests include second language acquisition, teacher professional development, and national language capacity.
Hans-Jörg Schmid
Hans-Jörg Schmid (Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Germany)
Hans-Jörg’s works covers a wide range of linguistic topics, ranging from semantics to pragmatics and from cognitive linguistics to language change, all from a usage-based view. He has a broad perspective on language and brings together contributions from various linguistic domains. We invited Hans-Jörg to present his Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model, a dynamic complex-adaptive model of linguistic structure, variation and change.
Simone Pfenninger
Simone Pfenninger (University of Salzburg, Austria)
Simone is one of the rising stars in our field. She has done important research on the evaluation of teaching methodologies and the age factor, but also more fundamental research on research methodology. She represents the future of AL at the conference.
Her topic will be questioning causality in applied linguistics and she will discuss dynamic methodological perspectives on the future of inferential goals and causal concepts.
Alastair Pennycook
Alastair Pennycook (University of Technology Sydney, Australia)
Alastair has never been afraid to enter new territory. Over the years he has challenged many of the core ideas in applied linguistics, arguing for the importance of considering language as a social and political practice, with implications for many domains of inquiry such as the global spread of English or critical applied linguistics. Recently, this has involved a turn towards posthumanist ideas and southern theories in an attempt to understand the relations among language, things, people and place, and to rethink applied linguistic concerns from alternative spaces. Thirty years ago, he outlined a project for a ‘critical applied linguistics for the 1990s’. His paper will revisit that proposal, explore what has changed since, and outline ways in which a renewed critical applied linguistics can be developed to engage with contemporary conditions and concerns.