Group photo of all awards recipients at ALAA Conference 2025 (Image credit: ALAA)

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the 2025 Applied Linguistics Association of Australia (ALAA) Conference, held at Charles Darwin University in Garramilla/Darwin on Larrakia Country from November 17-19. The conference was devoted to the topic ‘Language and the Interface of Mono-, Multi-, and Translingual Mindsets’ and brought together Australian and international scholars.

The 3-day conference in a tropical setting offered many inspiring and new experiences and an excellent platform for networking, collaboration and the exchange of ideas.

Inspiring Keynotes

Keynote lectures delivered by Shoshana Dreyfus (University of Wollongong) and Robyn Ober (Batchelor Institute) left a great impression on me.

Shoshana spoke about linguistic strategies in activism. She presented a positive discourse analysis unraveling effective activist discourse in letters to the minister. Based on such a letter she had written herself, her talk showed how activists rally support. Her compassionate talk shed light on different registers to make change and become an ally for non-verbal people.

Robyn introduced the audience to beautiful metaphors of linguistic diversity and exchange in Indigenous Australian education. Her description of “slipping and sliding” between languages gave insights into multilingual practices.

The audience was particularly touched by the metaphor of language as a guitar: just as an instrument with multiple strings produces more melodious and harmonious tunes, multilingual people have more than one string to their bow, which creates greater harmony when joined.

Encountering Indigenous Languages and Cultures

The Macquarie University team at ALAA (Image credit: Sophie Munte)

As a PhD student from the University of Hamburg in Germany who currently spends time at Macquarie University in Sydney as part of my joint PhD degree across the two institutions, the conference offered me the privilege to learn about Indigenous languages and cultures.

Darwin offers a setting where the fact that Australia is Indigenous land is much more palpable than in Sydney. Together with Robyn’s keynote and other talks, this opened my eyes to Australia’s rich diversity of Indigenous cultures and languages.

Presenting my research

The conference provided me with the opportunity to present first results from my PhD research on the governance of parent-school communication in linguistically diverse schools in Hamburg and Sydney.

Employing policy analysis, surveys and interviews, my research explores the use of child language brokering as a way to bridge language barriers between parents and schools. The international comparison will shed light on how institutions in different national contexts deal with their shared responsibility to communicate with parents. Ultimately, the research will contribute to improved policies and teacher training so that all parents can fully participate in the education of their children, regardless of linguistic background.

Grateful to ALAA for the support

Attending the 2025 ALAA conference has been a wonderful opportunity for me. I am particularly grateful for the funding support I received through the ALAA Postgraduate Conference Scholarship. This scholarship, which was awarded to six higher degree research students, including myself, financially supports the conference attendance of HDR researchers.

I also commend the ALAA Higher Degree Research representatives for creating such an inclusive and welcoming event: each evening they organized meet-ups for all HDR candidates at the conference, including a language themed trivia night – all of which helped to establish a supportive community among us HDR students and build connections that will endure beyond the conference.