09 September 2025
The LoLaDev workshop takes the opposite side of studies focused on international dominant languages in development work, mainly drawn to English as the focus of language policies (Garrido 2024), and welcomes contributions focusing on how local languages can be used to challenge hegemonic language practices in humanitarian and (eco)development contexts, or, in some cases, reinforce hierarchies and silence the local communities.
ProgrammeLoLaDev
Call for abstracts
In this sense, the colloquium looks at contexts in which members of (eco)development projects are engaged in including local languages. While the potentialities of doing (eco)development multilingually, in line with recent calls to pluralistic approaches to sustainability and biodiversity research (Droz et al 2023), can appear as fostering social justice, the involvement of some social actors towards the use of local languages can also produce new forms of silencing. This workshop therefore intends to address these complexities.
The LoLaDev workshop will address the complexities of including local/indigenous knowledge in contexts of (eco)development. Traditionally, researchers in environmental and sustainability sciences have not been interested in the role of languages, although in recent years they have developed an interest in the role of social and cultural dimensions in the construction of sustainability as a contemporary social order (Holz 2018). Similarly, sociolinguistics has not addressed the socio-ecological issues related to sustainability and the environment and the role of languages in the construction of the idea of sustainable development.
This workshop aims to open an inter/transdisciplinary dialog in order to contribute to critical research on multilingualism (Heugh et al. 2021, Deumert & Makoni 2023) and critical research on development (Sondarjee 2020, Murrey & Daley 2023) through the geopolitics of knowledge (Mignolo 2008), in both the South and the North. It aims to bring together research from different fields in the humanities and social sciences, and recognizes that language and development practices are as much an anthropological, economic, geographical, linguistic, political, psychological and ecological object of research as they are a social one.
The LoLaDev workshop will be held over one or two days depending on submissions. The workshop will be divided in three main themes:
- Language and the geopolitics of knowledge
- Language and sustainability sciences
- Language and ecotourism
Guest lectures will be given by Ibon Tobes, Professor of Socio-ecology (Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica, Ecuador) and Maïka Sondarjee, Associate Professor of International Development and Global Studies (University of Ottawa, Canada).
Conditions
Abstracts (in English, French or Spanish) should be 300-500 words long and should be followed by a short bibliography and biography. A preliminary list of participants for panels and roundtables is required.
Deadline for submissions is June 1st, 2025.
Presentations can be in English, French or Spanish, but the power point must be in English.
In keeping with the scientific interests of the Fédération Sciences Sociales Sud (F3S), research in humanities and social sciences focusing on the circulation of knowledge in South/North-North/South-South/South relations will be given priority. However, all types of research about language and knowledge in (eco)development contexts will be evaluated.
In order to promote open science and the principles of transdisciplinarity, abstract proposals are open to all social actors of the research and development sectors.
Contact
Abstracts should be sent to Hermelind Le Doeuff (), Santiago Sanchez Moreano () and Stéphanie Brunot ().
Bibliographie / Bibliography / Bibliografía
Deumert, Ana & Makoni, Sinfree. 2023. From Southern Theory to Decolonizing Sociolinguistics: Voices, Questions and Alternatives. Multilingual Matters.
Laÿna Droz, Marcela Brugnach, and Unai Pascual, “Multilingualism for Pluralising Knowledge and Decision Making about People and Nature Relationships,” People and Nature 5, no. 3 (March 28, 2023): 874–84. Garrido, Maria Rosa. 2024. Linguistic inequality in the humanitarian sector: unravelling English-centric multilingualism. In Silke Roth, Bandana Purkayastha & Tobias Denskus (Eds), Handbook in Humanitarianism and Inequality (pp. 323-337). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Heugh, Katheleen, Stroud, Christopher, Taylor-Leech, Kerry & De Costa, Peter I. 2021. A Sociolinguistics of the South. Routledge.
Holz, Patrick. 2018. Towards a new social order? Real democracy, sustainability & peace. Wilmington, Delaware: Vernon Press, Vernon Series in Sociology.
Mignolo, Walter D. 2008. The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference. In Mabel Moraña, Enrique Dussel & Carlos A. Jáuregui (Eds), Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate (pp. 225-258). Duke University Press.
Murrey, Amber & Daley, Patricia. 2023. Learning Disobedience. Decolonizing Development Studies. Pluto Press.
Sondarjee, Maïka. 2020. Perdre le Sud. Décoloniser la solidarité internationale. Écosociété.
Tesseur, Wine. 2021. Language as Inclusion? An analysis of international NGOs’ translation policy documents. Language Problems and Language Planning, 45(3), 261–283.