Find us on the Sociolinguistic Events Calendar: https://baal.org.uk/slxevents/

Plenary speakers

Roundtable: Humans, machines, language in the loop

Invited speakers

Elvira Cámra Aguilera is a tenured professor at the University of Granada. She is a senior member of the ECIS research group. Her main research involves translation of children and young adult literature. She translated different literary works into Spanish, such as The Dead of James Joyce. She is the author of different short stories, such as Un vestido de godets y otros relatos. She is leading together with E. Macarena Pradas Macías, the innovation project: “Optimisation of performance in translation and interpreting training through positive communication based on values”.

Bochra Kouraïchi is an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at King Khalid University and was recently appointed Research Associate at SOAS University of London. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Szeged (2023). In 2014–2015, she was awarded a Fulbright grant to teach Arabic at SUNY Binghamton. She also holds an MA in Linguistics from the University of Sfax and an MA in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Tunis El Manar. With extensive teaching experience in Tunisia, Hungary, the United States, and Saudi Arabia, her research focuses on multilingualism and language learning motivation. She is also interested in translation using generative artificial intelligence.

Nina Markl is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Analytics and Data Science and the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex, in Colchester, south-east England. Her research focuses on the social, ethical and philosophical aspects of artificial intelligence and language technologies, incorporating methods and concepts from science and technology studies, feminist philosophies, sociolinguistics, design and computer science. She is interested in how communication technologies shape human interaction, including linguistic behaviour and beliefs, and, how existing and emerging social relations shape technology development, deployment and use. Before joining the University of Essex, she completed my PhD at the UKRI CDT for Natural Language Processing at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where she applied her sociolinguistic training and focus on automatic speech recognition tools.

E. Macarena Pradas Macías is a tenured professor at the University of Granada. She is the principal researcher of the ECIS+ research group, devoted to interpreting and translation quality studies. She started investigating the fluency of the interpreter's delivery, more specifically silent-pause patterns and introduced the "vertical"
analysis to determine the inner structure of quality criteria. Her current research focus lies on nonverbal factors which impact the interpreting quality. She is leading together with Elvira Cámara Aguilera, the innovation project:
"Optimisation of performance in translation and interpreting training through positive communication based on values".

Maribel Tercedor is a full professor at the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the University of Granada. She has been involved as a PI in researching translation and the language of medicine in different funded research projects, and a project on the expression of emotions. Her main research interests are in the fields of lexical and cognitive aspects of scientific and technical translation, terminology (variation and phraseology) and accessibility in translation. She participated in the making of the English-Spanish Oxford Dictionary and the Richmond series of dictionaries where she worked in neology selection, contextual information and entry structure. She is a member in the committee of the University of Granada, responsible for elaborating the ethical guidelines of the usage of AI at the University.

Francisco Acuyo Donaire is a poet, editor, essayist and researcher. He studied Law and also Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature in the University of Granada. He also holds a PhD in Comparative Literature. He is a member of the Andalusian Association of Semiotics; he is also a member in the research group do Semiotic Studies of the UGR. He is also a member of the research group Synesthesia and Creativity, Applied Interdisciplinary Research. His poetry has been translated into different languages, such as English, French, Polish, Russia, Portuguese, Arabic and Italian. He is the creator of the Blog Ancile, where he has different publications about AI and poetry.

Moderator: Rodney Jones (University of Reading)

Call for papers - now closed, left below for archiving

We welcome everyone interested in the impact of new and emerging language technologies that integrate with human senses - real-time translation, voice and face augmentation, advanced conversational chatbots, and other tech that blurs the line between human interlocutor and machine agent. Whether you are a tech developer who wants to learn more about linguistics, or a linguist who wants to know more about tech, we want to hear from you! HuMaLa leads on from the COST Action ‘Language In The Human-Machine Era’ (https://lithme.eu); you can find out more about our core themes of interest from the LITHME forecast report (https://doi.org/10.17011/jyx/reports/20210518/1) and animations (https://lithme.eu/animations).

HuMaLa’s inaugural conference will be held at the University of Granada, Spain, on 24-25 June 2025. The conference theme is:

‘Humanistic insights for human-machine language technologies: privacy, security, and wellbeing’

This echoes the priorities of the EU’s recently introduced AI Act: “human oversight, safety, privacy, transparency, non-discrimination and social and environmental wellbeing” (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230609IPR96212/). We hope to explore these timely topics from a range of humanistic perspectives, with a focus on human-machine language technologies. We welcome researchers and developers from computer science, linguistics, sociology, education, and more. To understand the more general scope of the conference, again, see the LITHME forecast report and animations.

In addition to technical work (e.g., model description or dataset), we also welcome theoretical and empirical studies on the ethical, legal, cultural and social implications of language technology adoption across these domains. 

Presentation format: Talk (20 mins), non-archival

Presentations can address any of the topics that fall within the interests of HuMaLa. Selection for places will be made by the conference scientific committee.

We encourage early career applicants to read a guide on abstract writing, for example: https://info.lse.ac.uk/current-students/student-futures/how-to-write-an-abstract. Senior colleagues are used to all this, and are therefore at a somewhat unfair advantage. We hope the above guide (and others like it) will help early career applicants to craft their abstract more precisely.

Scroll down for the submission form.

Conference award:

Conference award granted by Multilingualism Matters.

Fees and registration

Full: I am a presenter and I have access to institutional funding -- EUR 120

Full: I am a presenter and I have access to institutional funding + dinner -- EUR 156

Reduced: I am a presenter and I do not have access to institutional funding -- EUR 85

Reduced: I am a presenter and I do not have access to institutional funding + dinner -- EUR 121

Non-presenting: I am not presenting a talk -- EUR 20

Non-presenting: I am not presenting a talk + dinner -- EUR 56

presenting: Between jobs, paid hourly, or retired --  EUR 0

Dinner -- EUR 36

Registration form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeUo4zsxjwX1SWrX6GJoQ4SeSUiTg3RNb8clQtnA7AeIwSZDw/viewform?usp=header 

To register,  please pay your registration fees to the University of Granada*:

Name: UNIVERSIDAD DE GRANADA
BIC: CAIXESBBXXX
IBAN: ES58 2100 4224 3913 0072 0546
Reference: FirstName_LastName_HuMaLa_type-of-registration

(e.g., Nina_Markl_HuMaLa_full)

(e.g., Nina_Markl_HuMaLa_full + dinner)

* Refundable until 20 May 2025. 

Chairs

Amal Haddad Haddad (University of Granada)

Dave Sayers (University of Jyväskylä) 

Organising Committee

Doris Dippold (University of Surrey)

Şerife Durna (Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University)

Amal Haddad Haddad (University of Granada)

Zoe Handley (University of York)

Rodney Jones (University of Reading)

Bochra Kouraichi (King Khalid University)

Nina Markl (Univesity of Essex) 

Joanne McDowell (Univeristy of Hertfordshire)

Dave Sayers (University of Jyväskylä) 

Local Organising Committee

Paula Alemán Carmona 

Elvira Cámara Aguilera

Marina Garvi Fernéndez

Amal Haddad Haddad

Macarena Pradas Macías

Alina Trubnikova

Programme

Guidelines for presentations

Each participant will have 20 minutes + 5 minutes for discussion and questions.

Please bring your presentation on a USB drive: format .PPTX or PDF

Book of abstracts

Accomodation suggestions:

• Hotel Reina Cristina*** https://www.hotelreinacristina.com/ 

• Hotel Casa de la Trinidad**** https://www.casadelatrinidad.com/