Border Renaissance Conference and the best practices collected in Ocean i3's Language Policy

Euskampus participates in the UniGR-CBS conference with the presentation of the Language Policy created in the framework of the Ocean i3 cross-border project. Good practices in multilingualism collected in the observation of this multilingual cross-border community. 

 

Scholars from North America, Europe and the Greater Region will discuss current developments and results in border research on February 4 and 5, 2022. The UniGR-CBS conference deals with the renaissance of borders and brings together territorial and cultural Border Studies. The 22 multilingual panels with nearly 100 speakers are international and represent the thematic as well as disciplinary spectrum of contemporary border research.

The UniGR-Center for Border Studies (UniGR-CBS) is a thematic cross-border network of esearchers conducting research on borders, their meanings and challenges in the «heart of Europe»

The UniGR-Center for Border Studies (UniGR-CBS) is a thematic cross-border network of approximately 80 researchers within the university grouping University of the Greater Region (UniGR) conducting research on borders, their meanings and challenges. Due to its geographical position in the «heart of Europe», its expertise and disciplinary diversity, the UniGR-CBS has the best prerequisites for becoming a European network of excellence.

The conference will be opened by Manfred Schmitt (President Saarland University), Cornelius König (Vice President of Saarland University) and Astrid M. Fellner (UniGR-CBS project coordinator at Saarland University) followed by a high-level roundtable discussion on the impact of the health crisis on European border regions.

The conference "Border Renaissance: Recent Developments in Territorial, Cultural, and Linguistic Border Studies" is part of the Interreg VA Project " European Center for Competence and Knowledge in Border Studies" and takes place in a hybrid format at Saarland University.

The UniGR-CBS 2022 conference in short:  

• Feburary 4-5, 2022, Saarland University (in hybrid format)
• 22 multilingual panels, nearly 100 speakers from 20 countries, 2 keynotes
• Round table "The impact of the global health crisis on European border regions".

The aim of the conference is, on the one hand, to elaborate the renaissance of the border in various thematic fields and to identify its challenges for future research. For this purpose, recent developments in territorial, cultural and linguistic border research will be applied. On the other hand, the research strands of spatial and cultural border research conducted in the UniGR-CBS will be brought together. This will consolidate the cooperation within the UniGR-CBS and strengthen the dialogue with international border researchers.

 

Euskampus participated in the conference, specifically in the Border Languaging panel with the presentation of the Ocean i3 project and its experimentation in the multilingual arena of the community. The recently published Language Policy was presented as an example of best practices in multilingualism and multiculturalism in this cross-border community. The dichotomy between the use of a Lingua Franca such as English vs. multilingualism and the promotion of minority languages in the context of higher education were some of the topics discussed in the presentation. In the same panel, experiences on multilingual practices customized according to the media were also shared, as well as the adaptation of hashtags to languages or the controversy that has arisen due to the opt-in autotranslation starting to overlay multilingual communication.

Read more about the conference here.

Read more about Ocean i3 and the Language Policy here.