Welcome to the annual Autumn Symposium of the Finnish Association for Applied Linguistics (AFinLA), to be held at the University of Eastern Finland in Joensuu, Finland, on 6-8 November 2025!
The theme of the symposium is “Strength in variation”. Through this theme, we wish to highlight linguistic diversity and variation, and their advantages in language education, in working life and in the society at large. We also encourage discussions on the vitality of languages and the measures taken to support small languages. The symposium opens up new windows into multilingualism in Finland and to the linguistic wellbeing of Finnish residents speaking diverse languages.
We welcome presentations and workshop proposals especially on the following themes:
• Linguistic variation in language teaching and language education
• Multilingualism and linguistic variation in the work life
• Multilingualism, variation, and wellbeing
• Linguistic variation, minority languages and language revitalization
• Variation and receptive multilingualism
• Variation, translation and translator training
We also welcome presentations on all other areas of applied linguistics.
Proposals for presentations, posters and workshops must be submitted by 18 August 2025. Acceptance will be announced by 1 October 2025. The final deadline for registration and payment of the symposium fees is 15 October 2025.
The symposium programme includes three plenary talks:
Annekatrin Kaivapalu, University of Helsinki
Kaivapalu’s plenary will deal with receptional multilingualism.
Elizabeth Peterson, University of Jyväskylä
The subject of Peterson’s plenary will be “The Devitalization of English in the Nordic Countries”.
Boglárka Straszer, Högskolan Dalarna (Dalarna University)
Straszer’s plenary will be about teaching of Finnish as L2 in Sweden.
Organizing committee: Maria Kok, Heli Paulasto, Esa Penttilä, Jaana Kolu, Lea Meriläinen, Milla Uusitupa, Ilja Moshnikov, Niko Tynnyrinen and Iiris Salminen
See the symposium website for updates.