Call for Pre- and Post-conference Workshops now open!
The annual conference of the Southern African Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Society (SALALS) will be hosted by the University of Johannesburg’s Department of Languages, Cultural Studies and Applied Linguistics (LanCSAL) from 25 to 27 June 2024.
The conference will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Keynotes
Professor Hilary Janks (Emerita, University of the Witwatersrand)
Professor Janks is a leader in the teaching and theorising of Critical Literacy in both South Africa and the world.
Her academic career has been in pre- and in-service teacher education, and she has been responsible for both teacher preparation and research supervision in the area of English Education.
She has both taught and been a research fellow in the UK, Australia, Canada, the USA, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, and Scotland.
She has received several national and international awards for her work in this field.
In 2014 she was the first scholar from Africa, and the first from South Africa to be elected to the Reading Hall of Fame in the USA.
She is a National Research Foundation rated researcher – Category A2.
She has supervised to completion 18 PhD’s and has an impressive research output in accredited journals and books.
Professor Victor Mugari (University of Zimbabwe)
Prof Victor Mugari is the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities (2020-) and an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Zimbabwe where he has taught since November 2003.
He graduated with a Doctoral degree in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from the Beijing Language and Culture University (China, 2012), and served as the Chairman of the Department of Linguistics from May 2017 to August 2020.
His research interests include Syntax and its interfaces with Semantics, Morphology, Sociolinguistics, Strategic Communication, Bilingualism and Second Language Learning.
He is currently working on Sign language research, and language in ICT research. He has widely published in the area of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics and has also presented at academic conferences both nationally and internationally.
Professor Ruslan Mitkov (Lancaster University)
Prof Dr Ruslan Mitkov is Professor in Computing and Communications at Lancaster University, one of the top-10 UK universities.
Prior to joining Lancaster University, Prof Mitkov worked at the University of Wolverhampton where he created and led the internationally leading Research Group in Computational Linguistics, and was also Director of the Research Institute of Information and Language Processing as well as Director of the Responsible Digital Humanities Lab. Dr Mitkov has been working in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computational Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Machine Translation, Translation Technology and related areas since the early 1980s.
Whereas Prof Mitkov is best known for his seminal contributions to the areas of anaphora resolution, automatic generation of multiple-choice tests and intelligent translation memory systems, his extensively cited research (more than 300 publications including 15 books, 35 journal articles and 35 book chapters) also includes but is not limited to topics such as machine translation, natural language processing for language disabilities, automatic summarisation, computer-aided language processing, corpus annotation, bilingual term extraction, automatic identification of cognates and false friends, NLP-driven corpus-based study of translation universals and text simplification. His recent research includes the employment of Deep Learning, Large Language Models and Artificial Intelligence in Natural Language Processing, linguistics and language research in general. Prof Mitkov is not only known for his original research outputs with high scientific impact, but also known for his vision and innovative applied research which seeks to enhance the work efficiency of different professions (teachers, translators and interpreters) or seeks to improve the quality of life (people with disabilities).
Prof Mitkov is author of the monograph Anaphora resolution (Longman) and sole Editor of The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics (Oxford University Press) which has been hailed as the most successful Oxford Handbook and whose second, substantially revised edition was published in June 2022. Current prestigious projects include his role as Executive Editor of the Journal of Natural Language Engineering (Cambridge University Press), Editor-in-Chief of the Natural Language Processing book series of John Benjamins publishers, and Consulting Editor of Oxford University Press publications in Computational Linguistics.
Prof Mitkov has been invited as a keynote speaker at 220 international conferences and is/has been Chair of more than 70 conferences on Natural Language Processing, Translation Technology and Applied Linguistics topics.
Mitkov designed and is Director of the first and only Erasmus Mundus Master’s programme in Technology for Translation and Interpreting – an innovative and inspirational programme, with a strong research focus but an equally strong emphasis on business; leading companies in the global translation and language industry participate as associated partners.
Prof Mitkov has been an external examiner of many doctoral theses and curricula in the UK and abroad, including Master’s programmes related to NLP, Translation and Translation Technology.
Ruslan Mitkov received his MSc from the Humboldt University in Berlin, his PhD from the Technical University in Dresden and worked as a Research Professor at the Institute of Mathematics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia. He is a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, Marie Curie Fellow, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Franche-Comté in Besançon, France and Distinguished Visiting Researcher at the University of Malaga, Spain.
Ruslan Mitkov is Vice President of AsLing an international Association for promoting Language Technology.
In September 2022 the renowned National Board of Medical Examiners (USA) presented Prof Mitkov with a certificate of distinguished collaboration which resulted in lasting impact on the strategic planning and decision making of the US organisation and their employment of NLP solutions to assessment for the last 17 years.
In recognition of his outstanding professional/research achievements, Prof Mitkov was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa three times. First, he was became Doctor Honoris Causa at Plovdiv University in November 2011. At the end of October 2014 Dr Mitkov was conferred Professor Honoris Causa at Veliko Tarnovo University and on 25 October 2022 Prof R Mitkov received the title ‘Doctor Honoris Causa’ for the third time, this time awarded by New Bulgarian University, Sofia.
Ruslan Mitkov was selected as ‘Doctor of Excellence’ at the University of Alicante.
For additional information, please visit Prof Ruslan Mitkov’s webpage.
SALALS Conference 2024 