Keynote speakers
We welcome the following keynote speakers:
- Stef Craps (Ghent University, topic: From Apocalypse to Earthrise: Stories That Make Climate Matter)
- Joke Daems (Ghent University, topic: Gender bias in Language and Translation Technology)
- Veronika Koller (Lancaster University, topic: Raising language awareness through critical metaphor analysis: the case of corporate discourse).
Book of abstracts
Tentative programme (subject to changes)
DAY 1: Wednesday 25 February 2026
| 8:45 | Introduction by the organisers | |||||||||
| 9:10 | Keynote 1: Joke Daems (Ghent University, topic: Bias & Binaries: Gender in Language and Translation Technology) | |||||||||
| 10:00 | Coffee and tea break | |||||||||
| Session 1 presentation | Session 2 presentation | Session 3 presentation | Session 4 workshop | Session 5 workshop | ||||||
| 10:30 | Stream 2 Helen Sauntson and Clare Cunningham Social actor representations in children’s environmental justice narratives: A critical linguistic analysis | Stream 2 Iiris Nuutinen The linguistic framing of animal agency in Parliamentary discussions | Stream 2 Thomas Franck “Energy Transition” is not Degrowth. Unveiling the Ideological Underpinnings of Techno-solutionist French-speaking Media Discourse (2020-2025) | Stream 1 Luc Hoang, Elisa Robbe & Alexandra Sanchez Listening in/to the Global South: Sound, Accessibility, and Belonging from Vietnam to the Caribbean | Stream 2 Matt Drury Workshop: What’s behind your slides? Critical Language Awareness in action | |||||
| 11:00 | Stream 1 Agnese Ughetti Critical Discourse Analysis of Green Claims in the Textile Industry: Guidelines for Uninformed Consumers | Stream 1 Walter Giordano Advertising and Language Awareness: Protecting Customers | Stream 2 Nevena Manic The Voice of Water: Selective Agency Attribution in Serbian Media Discourse | |||||||
| 11:30 | Stream 1 Evangelia Mourtzanou Victim or Survivor? Identity Construction in victim narratives | Stream 1 Melody Yunzhu Chen Metaphor as Testimony: Adolescents’ Discursive Framing of Their Lived Experiences of Sexual Violence | Stream 1 Ulrike Vogl; Maria Nikijuluw Media Representations of the Banda Genocide and Jan Pieterszoon Coen in Indonesian and Dutch Newspapers (1970-2025) | Stream 1 Inge Misschaert Read & meet! The perks of in depth reading and readings with authors for students in secondary education | Stream 2 Maria Pilar Uribe Silva, Erika Darics, Rik Van Noord, Malvina Nissim Spotting Deceptive Language in Sustainability Reports | |||||
| 12:00 | Stream 1 Rania Habib From Liberation to Legitimation: Critical Language Awareness of Sectarian Narratives in Post-Revolutionary Syria | Stream 2 Laura Narisano A Pillar for the Future or a Fad Diet? Competing Metaphors in Media Sustainability Coverage | Stream 2 Luca Brigada Villa & Chiara Zanchi – Perceived Sustainability: Web Search Trends and Social Media Debates in the Decade 2015-2025 | |||||||
| 12:30 | Lunch | |||||||||
| 13:30 | Keynote 2: Stef Craps (Ghent University, topic: From Apocalypse to Earthrise: Stories That Make Climate Matter) | |||||||||
| Session 1 presentation | Session 2 presentation | Session 3 presentation | Session 4 workshop | Session 5 workshop | ||||||
| 14:30 | Stream 1 Elijah Lazar Crisis as a Strategy of European Union Migration Governmentality | Stream 2 Merlijn Verduin Towards an Ecopoetics of Ambiguity; Rethinking Environmental Mourning at the Crossroads of Hope and Hopelessness | Stream 1 Lucie Niclaes Was it about caring or about resisting? Discursive representations of the postcolonial relationship between Belgium and the Democratic Republic of Congo | Stream 1 Esther Bettney Heidt From Ideology to Action: Designing Equitable Language Policy in Practice | Stream 1 Ellen Van Praet, Pablo De Cock, Fien Dewiest, Marie Delegrange Multilingual Care with AI - Building Trust, Safety and Solidarity through Digital Language Tools [part 1] | |||||
| 15:00 | Stream 1 Mahn Hei Yu Heritage maintenance beyond Mandarin in the Chinese diaspora: Superdiversity, contested Chineseness, and sanctuary from homeland repression | Stream 2 Simone Wiegman Retelling Flight Paths: Alternative Imaginaries of Aviation in Surinamese Postcolonial Literature | Stream 1 Andréa Machado de Almeida Mattos Postmemory and Semiotic Landscapes as Resistance: The Impact of Traumatic Historical Events on Community-based Practices for Social Change | |||||||
| 15:30 | Coffee and tea break | |||||||||
| Session 1 presentation | Session 2 presentation | Session 3 alternative activity | Session 4 workshop | Session 5 workshop | ||||||
| 16:00 | Stream 1 Lotte Remue, Marie Jacobs, Katrijn Maryns Discourses of truthfulness and narrative standards: a linguistic-ethnographic perspective on helping encounters with asylum seekers. | Stream 2 Corpus Navalón-Guzmán Speaking the Unspeakable? Queer Climate Trauma in Sim Kern’s Depart, Depart! | Documentary “Duty of Care” by Nic Balthazar (Duty of Care | 11.11.11) | Stream 1 Erika Darics The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) and the transformative potential of language awareness | Stream 1 Ellen Van Praet, Pablo De Cock, Fien Dewiest, Marie Delegrange Multilingual Care with AI - Building Trust, Safety and Solidarity through Digital Language Tools [part 2] | |||||
| 16:30 | Stream 2 Hajar Taha Europe’s Trash, Morocco’s Burden: Discourse and Coloniality in Morocco’s Waste Import Debate | |||||||||
| 17:15 | (subject to change) Ghent city walk | Documentary “Duty of Care” by Nic Balthazar (Duty of Care | 11.11.11) (room Honoré D'O) | ||||||||
| 19:30 | CONFERENCE DINNER | |||||||||
DAY 2: Thursday 26 February 2026
| 9:00 | Introduction by the organisers | ||||
| 9:10 | Keynote 3: Veronika Koller (Lancaster University, topic: Raising language awareness through critical metaphor analysis: the case of corporate discourse) | ||||
| 10:00 | Coffee and tea break | ||||
| Session 1 presentation | Session 2 presentation | Session 3 presentation | Session 4 workshop | Session 5 workshop | |
| 10:30 | Stream 1 Mira Wyns, Chloé Lybaert, Sarah Van Hoof Student Perceptions of Accent Bias and Accent Anxiety | Stream 1 Carmen Pena- Díaz, Candelas Bayón-Cenitagoya & Belén Llopis-Pérez Language, Power, and Access to Healthcare: Discursive Inequalities in Communication with Migrant Patients at La Paz Hospital | Stream 2 Sune Vork Steffensen Critical Corporeality: Integrating ecolinguistics and eco-Marxism | Stream 1 Marcela Huilcán, Maria Mazzoli Supporting Indigenous sustainable development: Practice-based insights into linguistic research with Indigenous and minoritised languages | Stream 1 Sylvia Liuti, Martina Morbidini Campaigning for gender-sensitive language in online environments: strategies and lessons learned from the GenderED Coalition project |
| 11:00 | Stream 1 Camille Marvin Who gets linguistic justice? Boundaries of inclusion and exclusion in the minoritized-language classroom | Stream 1 Berhanu Asfaw Weldemikael Inclusion or Political Correctness? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Euphemistic Expressions towards Disability | Stream 2 Albin Wagener Narratives of social and ecological transformation: The case of France between 1980 and 2020 | ||
| 11:30 | Stream 1 Marta Marcora; Letizia Prostamo; Janina Wildfeuer; Dimitris Serafis Unveiling multimodal soft hate speech in Mediterranean online news: systematic tools to counter implicit forms of discrimination | Stream 1 Cato Denissen The Effectiveness of Everyday Linguistic Agency: Reconceptualizing Self-Advocacy Among People with Physical Disabilities | Stream 2 Aziza Zijlstra Political Discourses of Extractivism in the Northern Netherlands and Institutional Learning Across a Decade | ||
| 12:00-13:00 | Lunch | ||||
| Session 1 presentation | Session 2 presentation | Session 3 presentation | Session 4 workshop | Session 5 workshop | |
| 13:00 | Stream 1 Iris Padiou Play as a Site of Creative Resistance to Inequality: An Interactional Sociolinguistic Perspective | Stream 1 Paul Sambre Disclosing a Social Italian Grammar for Efficient Ethics: Framing Resistance in the GOEL Movement | Stream 1 Anneleen Spiessens Mapping against the grain: Safe havens and the politics of translation in Antwerp’s Red Star Line Museum | Stream 1 Sara Gemelli, Chiara Zanchi From news discourse to classroom practice: Participatory activities on the representation of femicides | Stream 1 Miran Ahn My invisible neighbour: Social class representation in language learning materials |
| 13:30 | Stream 1 Elisa Robbe Audio/visual Counter-narratives of Migration in Mexico: coffee, cinema and radical hospitality | Stream 1 Laura Aull CLA Analysis of "Bad Grammar" | Stream 1 Artur Urbaniak Sociolinguistic Dimensions of Social (In)justice: JEDI in the U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses (1961-2025) | ||
| Session 1 alternative activity | Session 2 | Session 3 workshop | Session 4 workshop | Session 5 workshop | |
| 14:00 | Documentary ‘Woord x Macht x Strijd’, documentary with Jan Blommaert. | t.b.d. | Stream 1 Lieve Van Boxstael Pardon me for apologizing!” Analysing Public Apologies as Sites of Linguistic Manipulation | Stream 2 Jelte Olthof Voicing the Future: The Rhetoric of Future Generations Advocacy in Youth Climate Activism | Stream 1 Arthur Vincent Refreshing foreign language learning methods in France's underserved K12 schools, with physical activity, European volunteers and AI |
| 14:30 | t.b.d. | ||||
| 15:00 | Coffee and tea break | ||||
| Session 1 presentation | Session 2 presentation | Session 3 presentation | Session 4 workshop | Session 5 workshop | |
| 15:30 | Stream 1 Madison Steele; Jan D. ten Thije Reconstructing language choice and understanding in multilingual meetings at a Dutch university | Stream 2 Leina Jucá The Colonial-Ecological Entanglement: Critical Language Awareness and Ecological Justice in the Brazilian Amazon | Stream 1 Shumaila Memon Textbooks, Gender, and Symbolic Power: Critical Perspectives on English Curriculum in Sindh, Pakistan | Stream 2 Joanna Chojnicka, Timo Boom, Letizia Prostamo, Bianca Andrei, Abigail Piltie, Julie Matsuzawa The Transformative Power of Stories: Introducing An Innovative MOOC Project workshop | Stream 1 Aurélie De Waele and inspired students Language and Crisis Communication: A Critical Language Awareness Lab |
| 16:00 | Stream 1 Frank van Splunder From the Ground Up: Grassroots Language Policy in Flemish Higher Education | Stream 2 Jens Fleischhauer Climate skepticism in German political discourse - argumentative patterns and lexical expressions | Stream 1 Hanne Verhaegen, Laura Robaey Are Flemish students open to gender-inclusive language in their foreign language? | ||
| 16:30 | Stream 1 Caroline E. Parker, Esther Bettney-Heidt, Mariana Castro Codified Power: A Comparative Study of Language Ideologies in Educational Policy | Stream 2 Martina Russo Corpus-Assisted Ecolinguistics and a Grammar of Enchantment in Nature Writing | Stream 1 Linde Wille Mrs. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, or Just Rabbit? A Study on Gender and Gender Stereotyping in Animal Characters in Children’s Books | ||
| 17:00 | Closing by the organisers | ||||
| 17:30 | Closing drinks | ||||