The University of Bergen Holds a Conference on Multilingualism in Education

On 18th and 19th March, the research group Multilingualism on My Mind (MoMM) at the University of Bergen’s Department of Foreign Languages holds a two-day virtual conference on multilingualism in education. Registration is open and free for all.

The decision to hold such a conference comes as societies become increasingly multicultural and linguistically diverse, with far-reaching implications for how education is conceptualized, delivered, and received.

This conference is closely linked to the Arqus Action Line Multilingual & Multicultural University (AL4). In order to move forward towards the European Union goal of all citizens being competent in two languages other than their own, the partner universities have decided to devote an entire action line to the promotion of our institutions as multilingual environments. The action line is amongst others undertaking the promotion of multilingualism and multiculturalism in university programmes, academic discourses and administration.

The conference programme includes two posts by colleagues at our Arqus partner universities. The first on 18th March at 17.00 CET (room 3): Irmgard Wanner, Fabiana de Lima and Jupp Möhring (Leipzig University): How students engage in informal virtual language exchanges: Preliminary results of a multilingual European project. The second on 19th March at 14:55 CET (room 1B), Eva Seidl (University of Graz): Academic language teaching and learning: The multilingual classroom as a learning space for students and teachers as co-participants. Register for the conference here.

The MoMM 2021 conference welcomes contributions also from Arqus Alliance partners and from a variety of perspectives to explore these questions and others related to multilingualism in education. The conference offers presentations from researchers, including PhD and master’s students, that cover original research on multilingualism in education. Proposals can also cover practitioner accounts of implementing specific activities and approaches related to multilingualism in education. Teachers are therefore strongly encouraged to submit such proposals and share their experiences.

The program schedule for the conference can be accessed here.

The book of abstracts for the conference is now online and can be downloaded here.