Call for Papers

The 56th Annual Conference on African Linguistics will be held at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, on May 15-17, 2025.

ACAL welcomes papers on any area of African Linguistics for paper or poster presentations.

The conference will feature a special session and poster presentation opportunities on the conference theme, African Languages in Diaspora. Abstracts that fit the conference theme may also be considered for the general sessions. 

Paper presentations will be 20 minutes long with 10 minutes for questions. The conference will be held in person, but presenters who are unable to attend in person will be able to deliver their presentations virtually.

Due Dates

• Early deadline (for visa applicants): September 1, 2024

• Final deadline: January 10, 2025

The final deadline for submissions is January 10, 2025, 11:59 pm Central Standard Time. We will provide decisions on all submitted abstracts by mid-February.

For those who would require a visa to travel to a conference in the USA, we encourage you to submit by the September deadline; we will provide decisions on these abstracts by the end of September so that accepted presenters can begin the visa application process.

Abstracts will be subject to blind review.

Submission Guidelines

Abstract Guidelines

Abstracts should be submitted in English and must not exceed 500 words, including any data, figures and tables. References are not included in the 500-word limit. Non-English language data should include interlinear glosses following the Leipzig Glossing Rules.

The 500-word abstract should be single-spaced, in a Unicode font no smaller than 11 point, and in .pdf format.

Some guidelines for writing successful abstracts can be found here.

Submission Instructions

All abstracts must be submitted online through EasyAbs. 

If you have never used EasyAbs before, you will need to register.

Submissions are restricted to one single-authored paper and two co-authored papers per individual.

Notification of acceptance will be in mid-February 2025.

Please note that in order to present a paper or poster at ACAL 56, presenting authors must be members of the Association of Contemporary African Linguistics (ACAL). To pay membership fees, please go to the ACAL organization website. Membership fees are collected by the ACAL organization, not the conference organizers.

Publication

Selected Papers from the 56th Annual Conference on African Linguistics will be reviewed and published in the series Contemporary African Linguistics by Language Science Press.

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to acal56@umn.edu.