[Linganth] CFP: Papers for Session on Multilingual Education in Asia (Association of Asian Studies Conference 2026)

Ward, Shannon shannon.ward at ubc.ca
Thu Jul 17 21:47:37 UTC 2025


Dear Colleagues,

I am seeking two authors to join a panel submission for the 2026 Association of Asian Studies conference in Vancouver (March 12-15). Please see below the panel description. If interested, please email a paper title and abstract of 250 words to shannon.ward at ubc.ca by July 28.

Across Borders and Belonging: Multilingual Education and Changing Mobilities in Asia

Transnational mobility has served as a catalyst for multilingual education in Asia—both education in minoritized languages as well as education in dominant global languages such as English. Despite an expansion of multilingual education in the 21st century, however, communities across Asia are currently grappling with government policies that shift between promoting transnational connection and enforcing social, ethnic, and geographic borders. In this context, how do ideologies about borders manifest in policies for multilingual education and on-the-ground practices in schools, homes, and communities? How do these changing policies and practices shape the forms of belonging that mobile communities build through their migration routes?
Through ethnographic case studies of a range of mobile communities, including rural-to-urban migrants, diasporic communities, and refugees, our addresses these questions by considering how multilingual education can simultaneously promote belonging and reify borders. Papers seek to disrupt common narratives about the relationship between multilingualism and transnational connection, which often treat multilingualism as a consequence of globalization despite the rapid language endangerment that has followed from associated forms of neoliberal expansion. By analyzing multilingual education amid changing mobilities, our panel positions Asian migrant communities at the center of possibilities for future language vitality and language revitalization at a moment when patterns of transnational connection are rapidly shifting.


Dr. Shannon Ward, PhD (she/her<https://equity.ubc.ca/resources/gender-diversity/pronouns/>)
Assistant Professor
Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences | Department of Community, Culture, and Global Studies
The University of British Columbia | Okanagan Campus | Syilx Okanagan Nation Territory

ARTS 270 | 1147 Research Road | Kelowna BC | V1V 1V7 Canada

Respectfully acknowledging that I live and work in the unceded and ancestral territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation.

Read my recent publications!
2024. Amdo Lullaby: An Ethnography of Childhood and Language Shift on the Tibetan Plateau<https://utppublishing.com/doi/book/10.3138/9781487558673>. University of Toronto Press
2024. The Construction of Linguistic Identities in Talk about Food among Tibetan Heritage Language Learners.<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01434632.2024.2421442> Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.
2024. Heritage Language Recognition: The multimodal construction of language in a Tibetan-Canadian family's literacy activities<https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/facultyresearchandpublications/52383/items/1.0447752>. Accepted in Language in Society.

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