37.2389, FYI: Springer Nature - Palgrave Macmillan Digital Justice and Language Education in the Global South - "AI, Policy, and Communication in China and South-East Asia" (Jrnl)
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Subject: 37.2389, FYI: Springer Nature - Palgrave Macmillan Digital Justice and Language Education in the Global South - "AI, Policy, and Communication in China and South-East Asia" (Jrnl)
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Date: 14-Jul-2026
From: Ran Yi [ran.yi at unsw.edu.au]
Subject: Springer Nature - Palgrave Macmillan Digital Justice and Language Education in the Global South - "AI, Policy, and Communication in China and South-East Asia" (Jrnl)
Call for Chapter Proposals
Digital Justice and Language Education in the Global South: AI,
Policy, and Communication in China and South-East Asia
Publisher: Springer Nature - Palgrave Macmillan
Edited by Ran Yi (Ph.D. UNSW Sydney, National Uni of Defense
Technology), Jinhua Sun (National Uni of Defense Technology),
Zhensheng Li (Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory)
About the volume
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how languages are taught,
learned, assessed, governed, and used in professional and public life.
Yet the intellectual and policy frameworks through which these changes
are understood remain unevenly distributed. Multilingual
societies—particularly those in China and Southeast Asia—are too often
treated as sites where technologies developed elsewhere are merely
applied, rather than as places from which theory, policy, and
technological futures are actively produced.
This edited volume offers a collective, interdisciplinary response to
the advancement of artificial intelligence in language education and
AI-mediated multilingual communication. Bringing together research
from language education, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics,
language policy, digital humanities, education, law, professional
communication, computer science, and AI ethics and governance, the
book will examine how AI operates across policy systems, educational
institutions, professional settings, and everyday communicative
practices.
The volume takes China and the member states of ASEAN as important but
internally diverse sites of inquiry. It does not treat the “Global
South” as a homogeneous or exclusively geographical category. Instead,
it approaches China and Southeast Asia as heterogeneous territories
situated within global north–south relations, including the “north in
the South” and the “south in the North.” Its southern epistemic
orientation is therefore intended not to delimit the book’s relevance,
but to contribute new concepts, evidence, and models to global debates
about AI, multilingual governance, language education, and digital
justice.
We especially hope to create space for the perspectives of Southeast
Asian scholars, China-based researchers, scholars working in and
across other Global South contexts, and researchers concerned with
historically underrepresented languages and multilingual communities.
Contributions from scholars in the Global North are also warmly
welcomed where they offer comparative, transregional, diasporic, or
critically reflexive perspectives. We particularly encourage
cross-regional and interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as
submissions from emerging and early-career scholars.
Intellectual aims
The book asks not simply what AI can do for language education, but
what kinds of linguistic, educational, professional, and social orders
AI helps to create. Its central concerns include:
- how AI policies, infrastructures, and platforms shape multilingual
communication;
- how generative and other forms of AI are transforming language
education and professional-language learning;
- how multilingualism, multilinguality, and normal languaging
complicate monolingual assumptions embedded in AI systems;
- how algorithmic mediation affects agency, trust, accountability,
access, fairness, and professional judgement;
- how country- and area-specific evidence can generate concepts and
models of wider global relevance; and
- how southern perspectives can inform the governance, design, and
evaluation of AI across both Global South and Global North settings.
The volume neither celebrates technological innovation uncritically
nor treats AI solely as a threat. Rather, it seeks empirically
grounded, theoretically engaged, and constructively critical accounts
of how institutions, educators, learners, professionals, and
communities are responding to technological change.
Organisation of the volume
The book is organised through a macro–meso–micro framework, followed
by a synthesis of southern models and global implications:
Part I. Digital Governance and Language Policy (Macro)
This part examines the policy, infrastructural, geopolitical, and
institutional conditions under which AI-mediated multilingual
communication operates.
Part II. AI and Professional Language Education (Meso)
This part explores professional and specialised language education,
including English for Specific Purposes, AI-supported learning,
assessment, cognitive load, learner agency, pedagogical design, and
professional communicative competence.
Part III. Algorithmic Mediation and Linguistic Equity (Micro)
This part investigates algorithmic evaluation and AI-mediated
interaction, with particular attention to communicative practice,
bias, fairness, trust, accountability, and linguistic equity.
Part IV. Southern Models and Global Implications
This part brings the preceding scales into dialogue and considers how
insights grounded in China, Southeast Asia, and other southern
contexts can reshape global discussions of AI, multilingualism,
education, and digital justice.
Prospective contributors should indicate the part to which their
proposed chapter would contribute. Chapters may work across more than
one scale where the relationship between those scales is made
explicit.
This is a selective call for a limited number of contributions within
an already established editorial architecture. Several core chapters,
including the volume’s integrative and concluding work, are being
developed by the editorial team or specifically invited contributors.
Open-call proposals will therefore be considered not only on their
individual merit, but also on whether they fill a clear geographical,
disciplinary, methodological, or conceptual need in the collection.
Suggested topics
We welcome original theoretical, empirical, methodological,
policy-oriented, and practice-based contributions. Relevant topics
include, but are not limited to:
- AI governance, language policy, and multilingual public
communication;
- the Digital Silk Road and the linguistic dimensions of digital
infrastructure;
- national, subnational, or comparative studies of China and ASEAN
member states;
- South–South, North–South, and transregional flows of educational
technologies and knowledge;
- generative AI in language teaching, learning, assessment,
curriculum, and teacher education;
- AI in English for Specific Purposes and other forms of
professional-language education;
- AI-mediated learning in legal, medical, business, technical,
interpreting, translation, and public-service contexts;
- learner and teacher agency, digital literacy, cognitive load, and
human–AI collaboration;
- multilingualism, multilinguality, translanguaging, and normal
languaging in AI-supported environments;
- low-resource and minoritised languages, linguistic diversity, data
access, and data sovereignty;
- automated assessment, benchmarking, feedback, and evaluation;
- algorithmic bias, fairness, explainability, accountability, and
linguistic justice;
- legal NLP, professional NLP, and the design or evaluation of
multilingual language technologies;
- AI-mediated professional interaction, institutional discourse, and
intercultural communication;
- digital humanities approaches to AI, language, and education;
- accessibility, disability, socioeconomic inequality, and uneven
digital participation;
- community responses, local innovation, and alternative or indigenous
knowledge systems; and
- implications of southern models for AI ethics, governance, and
education in Global North contexts.
Country and area studies are strongly encouraged. Such chapters should
move beyond description by explaining how the case revises,
challenges, or extends a wider theoretical, methodological, policy, or
comparative debate. We welcome qualitative, quantitative,
mixed-methods, corpus-based, computational, ethnographic,
experimental, and participatory approaches. Technical contributions
should explain their methods and implications in language accessible
to an interdisciplinary readership.
Proposal requirements
Please submit a single Word or PDF document containing:
1. a provisional chapter title;
2. an abstract of 400–500 words clearly stating the research problem,
geographical and institutional context, conceptual framework, methods
or evidence, principal argument or anticipated contribution, and fit
with the volume;
3. five to seven keywords;
4. the proposed part of the volume and a brief indication of any
connections to other parts;
5. a short chapter outline;
6. the name, affiliation, email address, and ORCID (if available) of
each author; and
7. a biographical note of approximately 100–150 words per author.
Please send proposals to [submission email] with the subject line
“Chapter Proposal – [Short Title / Lead Author Surname]”.
Informal enquiries are welcome and may be directed to [contact name
and email].
Chapter length and presentation
Accepted chapters should be approximately 8,000–10,000 words,
inclusive of endnotes and references. To comply with the volume’s
contractual limits, authors should use tables and figures selectively,
normally no more than two items in total per chapter unless otherwise
agreed with the editors. All visual material must remain legible in
black and white. Authors will be responsible for obtaining permission
to reproduce any copyrighted material.
Full chapters should be original, not previously published, and not
simultaneously under consideration elsewhere. Any referencing style
may be used in the proposal, provided it is consistent; accepted
contributors will receive detailed Palgrave manuscript and style
guidance.
Selection and editorial process
Proposals will be assessed for scholarly quality, originality, clarity
of argument, methodological or conceptual rigour, fit with the aims
and architecture of the volume, geographical and disciplinary
contribution, and accessibility to an interdisciplinary readership.
The editors will also consider the balance and coherence of the
collection as a whole.
Acceptance of a proposal is an invitation to submit a full chapter,
not a guarantee of publication. All submitted chapters will undergo
editorial and/or peer review and may require revision. Final inclusion
is subject to satisfactory review, timely completion of revisions,
coherence with the volume, and the publisher’s requirements.
The editorial team is committed to a collegial and developmental
process. Contributors will receive clear guidance on the volume’s
shared terminology and conceptual framework, while retaining the
distinctive disciplinary, regional, and methodological voice of their
chapters.
Indicative timetable
Stage Date
Chapter proposals due 9 September 2026
Decisions and invitations issued 10 October 2026
Full chapter manuscripts due 22 February 2027
Editorial/peer-review feedback returned 5 May 2027
Revised chapters due 7 July 2027
Final author corrections completed 9 September 2027
Complete manuscript delivered to Palgrave Macmillan 11 November
2027
Anticipated publication 22 February 2028
About the book
The completed manuscript will comprise approximately 80,000-100,000
words, including endnotes and references, and no more than 22
black-and-white tables, figures, graphs, charts, or photographs. The
volume is under contract with Palgrave Macmillan and is planned for
publication in 2028.
We warmly invite colleagues whose work can help build a genuinely
plural, globally relevant account of AI and language education.
Through this collection, we hope to bring country and area knowledge
into direct conversation with global theory, and to show that
responses emerging from China, Southeast Asia, and other southern
contexts are not peripheral examples of technological change, but
vital sources of knowledge for shaping its future.
Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
Computational Linguistics
Discourse Analysis
Language Acquisition
Sociolinguistics
Subject Language(s): English (eng, stan1293)
Indonesian (ind, indo1316)
Mandarin Chinese (cmn, mand1415)
Thai (tha, thai1261)
Vietnamese (vie, viet1252)
Language Family(ies): Austro-Asiatic
Austronesian (aust1307)
Hmong-Mien (hmon1336)
Indo-European (indo1319)
Tai-Kadai (taik1256)
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