17 – 19 September: LEARNMe conference in Budapest (HU)

From 17 to 19 September, the international conference of the LEARNMe project will be held in Budapest. The conference will be titled Mercator-LEARNMe Conference on Minority Language Research, Educational practice and Policy. Revisiting Methodology, Learning and Established Concepts. Organization is in the hands of Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy Science, one of the Mercator Network partner institutes. Central aims are to present the outcomes of the three LEARNMe workshops, to expand one topics deserving more attention, and to bring together researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders to discuss the scholarly ánd practical challenges of multilingualism in Europe.

The conference, while centering on the three main themes of the LEARNMe project (minority language research, education and policy) will be very diverse. The organizing committee believes that an area so complex as the issue of minorities and their languages deserves a multidisciplinary and holistic approach. Building on the three workshops that have been held on these topics the last years, contributors are asked to show how researchers deal with methodological challenges in the highly diverse and dynamic field of multilingualism, ask important questions on certain long-standing concepts in the field, discuss modern approaches and technologies in the field of (minority) language learning), and reflect on urgent issues concerning minorities and their languages.

During the conference, a White Paper will be presented which outlines the findings of the LEARNMe project, based on the above-mentioned workshops and related Position Papers (see elsewhere on this site), making the conference the keystone in the three-year project. For more information, regularly check the Mercator-LEARNMe website (www.mercator-network.eu) or follow us on social media.