We live in a time of rapid and constant change that affects our lives and how we work. Academia is not immune to these changes, and new challenges arise daily. Among these challenges, we can highlight, on the one hand, the development of Artificial Intelligence and, on the other, the opening up of the University to new audiences with their own languages, cultures, and worldviews, as well as the emergence of new teaching and research contexts where knowledge is conveyed in languages other than those traditionally predominant in the academic world.

Holding the EATAW Conference in Portugal, a country in south-western Europe with deep links to the Ibero-American and African universes, is an opportunity to bridge different academic cultures and broaden the debate on academic literacy beyond the contexts in which it usually takes place.

 

Under the theme Multilingual Academic Literacies: Challenges and Opportunities in the Age of AI, this conference will enable the discussion of important issues such as:

• How do we understand and foster multilingual academic literacies?

• What current social, political, economic or technological phenomena challenge or facilitate the development of academic literacy, and how do we respond to these?

• How is the role of multilingualism in Europe changing, and how will this affect university writing?

• How is the growing use of large language models and other GenAI tools affecting academic literacy and/or multilingualism?

• How can GenAI tools help or hinder the teaching and learning of academic writing?

• How can writing specialists best be informed/educated/trained to deal with the challenges of multilingual academic literacy in the present time?