Call for Papers: AILA Research Network on the History of Language Learning and Teaching

CfP for HoLLT.net (AILA Research Network on the History of Language Learning and Teaching) for a symposium at AILA Vancouver 2027 (9-13 August 2027)

Organizer: Dr Simon Coffey, King’s College London | simon.coffey@kcl.ac.uk 

Symposium theme: The lives of language teachers through the centuries

From the slave tutor in antiquity and the émigré tutor of the modern period to the salaried professional of modern school systems and the language app designer, the way individuals have made their living by necessity and/or by personal passion for languages has depended on wider societal conditions, including socioeconomic structures and technological affordances. The proposed HoLLT.net symposium aims to present historical research that examines the lives of language teachers at different periods and geopolitical contexts. In keeping with the overarching theme of the Congress (Empowering voices, sustaining pluralities: cultivating languages and collective belonging) the contributions may focus on how teachers have historically operated within constraints such as those imposed by migration, by visible and invisible regimes of power, by desire for self-improvement and/or by the whims of market forces. We wish to consider how teachers have responded to changing circumstances, commodifying their language competence to survive and to find their place in the world, fostering support through formal and informal networks including patronage, reputation building, collectivising through professional associations and unions. We believe that this topic is especially timely given increasing precarity and volatility across the global language teaching sector. 

Kindly note that the symposium will be in-person only.

Possible sub-topics for the panel might include (but are not confined to):

• Memoirs and auto/biographies of language teachers
• Language teacher training structures: affordances and constraints
• Migrant teachers: relations with the host society and within expatriate communities
• Teacher identities and professional status
• Recruitment, retention and attrition in the language teaching profession
• The impact of ideologies and intellectual movements on individual teachers’ lives
• Structural and agentive affordances across gender, ethnicity, age, sexuality
• Collective action through unions and other solidarity movements

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words (excluding any references) to simon.coffey@kcl.ac.uk before 30/09/2026. Presentations can be in English or French.