Language Policy in Context: Bridging Global Perspectives and Local Realities

Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Republic of Croatia, 3-4 June 2027

📍 Venue address: Cara Hadrijana 10, 31000 Osijek (map link)📍

Osijek is Croatia's fourth largest city, with direct flights to major hub airports including Munich, Dubrovnik, and Zagreb, as well as train and coach connections to Zagreb. It is also in comfortable driving distance of Vienna, Graz, Ljubljana, and Budapest.

LPF 2027 will be in person only. We work to keep fees low (see below) and to ensure sufficient time and assistance for visa processing, in the interests of including delegates from as many different places as possible.

Ten years of the Language Policy SIG!

2027 marks ten years since the founding of the Language Policy Special Interest Group within the British Association of Applied Linguistics (with the first Language Policy Forum the following year). Since that time, the LPF has been hosted in the UK and in Spain, and now we are delighted to be hosted in Croatia.

Plenary speakers

Call for papers

The Language Policy Forum is international, affordable, and accessible. LPF 2026 in Madrid attracted delegates from four continents, and received an average feedback score of 8.6/10 (42% response rate). The LPF aims to foster international and cross-disciplinary dialogue on contemporary challenges and opportunities in Language Policy and Planning (LPP), recognising the complex interactions between local practices, (inter)national policies, and global developments, and to do so in a way that enables the broadest possible diversity of delegates to attend and enjoy the event.

We welcome delegates at all career levels and across different professional sectors.

A special focus of LPF 2027 is the relationship between monocentric and pluricentric language policies, and the ways in which different sociolinguistic traditions conceptualise language standardisation, variation, identity and language management. Contributions examining these issues from comparative, historical or contemporary perspectives are especially encouraged, although not exclusively. We further welcome contributions that engage with questions of multilingualism, linguistic diversity, language rights, language education, migration, digital communication, artificial intelligence, language revitalisation, linguistic landscapes, language ideologies, and the governance of languages in public and private domains. Indicative topics include (but are not limited to):

• Language Policy and Planning in multilingual societies

• Monocentric and pluricentric language policies

• Language standardisation and language ideologies

• Minority, regional and heritage languages

• Language rights and linguistic justice

• Language policy in education and higher education

• Migration, mobility and linguistic integration

• Language policy in Croatia, Southeast Europe and comparative contexts

• European and international language policy

• Language policy and digital technologies, including artificial intelligence

• Linguistic landscapes and public communication

• Community language planning and language revitalisation

• Language policy in public institutions and workplaces

• Methodological innovations in Language Policy and Planning research

Moreover, LPF 2027 embraces the broad scope of LPP and is intentionally open to a wide range of theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches.

In 2027, hosting the event in Croatia provides an additional opportunity to showcase scholarship and lived experiences from Croatia and neighbouring countries, and to introduce our international delegates to these valuable insights into multilingualism, minority language policies, cross-border communication, and the legacies of political and social change. Indeed, Croatia and neighbouring countries have had an outsized influence on many areas of LPP theory and method, for example discussions around linguistic nationalism, ausbau/einbau languages, the definition of language vs. dialect, and many other areas besides.

Last but not least, we welcome contributions that connect research with policy development and real-world language planning practices.

Abstract submission
DEADLINE Wednesday 30 September

(Please DO NOT get in touch asking for an individual extension to the deadline. Deadlines are for everyone equally. This keeps the process fair and transparent.)