DISTILS-01

Discoveries and Insights in Skills Training in Intergenerational Language Sustainability Conference & Workshop

Call for Papers

  • INSTILS – the International Network for Skills Training in Intergenerational Language Sustainability – invites you to its inaugural conference on Discoveries and Insights in Skills Training in Intergenerational Language Sustainability (DISTILS-01).

  • A key element of intergenerational language sustainability is building capacity within communities to define and meet their own language goals. To support these aspirations, numerous programs and initiatives (including CoLang, ELDP, AILDI, NILI, CILLDI, and others) have been developed around the world to offer skills training and support to communities in various areas, including language documentation, pedagogical methods, materials development, and community language planning, to name just a few.

  • Despite this, the language revitalization literature has paid comparatively little attention to critically analyzing these skills or the ways in which they are taught. As a result, the very notion of an ILS skill remains undertheorized, and a wide range of essential questions remain unanswered, including:
  • What are the ILS skills that communities most need? How might these differ between communities at different stages of language endangerment, or in different places across the globe?
  • How can these skills be identified, categorized, and prioritized?
  • What methods are most effective for providing this skills training in a diverse range of learning environments?
  • How can that knowledge be used to strengthen existing ILS skills-training programs, and support the development of new ones?
This conference seeks to advance the theorization of ILS skills and to lay a foundation for the further exploration of these questions.

Important Information

Conference Dates: May 4-6, 2026 Workshop Dates: May 7-8, 2026 Location: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada & Online Deadline for Abstracts: Friday, January 16, 2026 Deadline for Notification of Acceptance: Friday, February 6, 2026
Abstracts should be no more than 500 words (excluding references). Submissions must be anonymous. Each author may submit a maximum of two (2) abstracts, with no more than one (1) being single-authored. Abstracts should be in English. Presentations will be twenty (20) minutes long, with an additional ten (10) minutes for questions.
Information on registration fees, accommodations and social events will be forthcoming. Watch this space!

Workshop

Following the conference, INSTILS will host a two-day Workshop, May 7-8, where we will:
  • synthesize the findings presented at the conference
  • explore opportunities for research collaboration
  • prepare the outline for a forthcoming edited volume
  • highlight upcoming funding opportunities
  • discuss creating a formal structure for the Network