Associate Professor of Linguistics Seunghun Lee was awarded a grant of ¥300,000 this fall to host the Asian Junior Linguists (AJL) Conference at ICU. Professor Lee organized the conference with Professor Tomoyuki Yoshida, the current chair of ICU’s psychology and linguistics department, to provide a forum for pre-doctoral linguistics students to present their work. The conference took place from December 2nd (Friday) to 4th (Sunday) in ICU’s Dialogue House. The grant from JICUF was mainly used to invite two plenary speakers, namely Professors Diana Archangeli of the University of Hong Kong and Shigeto Kawahara of Keio University.

According to Professor Lee, this conference was the first venue where junior linguists in Asia had the opportunity to share their research. Until this conference, venues for linguistics majors to present were limited to North America and Europe. ICU was an appropriate host, as its renowned linguistics program has trained many prominent linguists over the years.

21 ICU students, five of whom were presenters, and three ICU faculty attended the event. The ICU students who presented were seniors currently completing their theses. Underclassmen were asked to volunteer to help prepare for and during the event. Participants from other universities included two plenary speakers, one workshop presenter, four students from the University of Hong Kong, two from Okayama University, and one each from Doshisha University and Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.

The conference kicked off with a plenary lecture by Professor Kawahara on Friday afternoon. Professor Kawahara is an ICU graduate and a leading scholar in phonetics. His lecture was followed by student presentations. On Saturday morning, Professor Archangeli gave her presentation on vowels in Assamese using ultrasound technology. After more student presentations, a hands-on technical workshop on “Using Ultrasound in Linguistic Research” (led by Prof. Archangeli and Dr. Jonathan Yip) took place in the afternoon. A reception was held in the evening. Then, on Sunday, the last day of the conference, the final group of students presented.

Professor Lee says that the conference successfully achieved its goals. The presenting students learned how to give an academic presentation both through the practice talk sessions one week prior and at the actual conference. Moreover, the organizing team learned how to plan and host a conference, and students from different institutions were able to network and experience a professional academic conference.

Professor Archangeli echoed Professor Lee’s sentiments. She commented that the conference introduced undergraduate students to the most important and exciting part of being an academic, namely to present the results of one’s research to an educated audience. It also helped students acquire skills like event planning and implementation, and gave them an opportunity to socialize with peers and faculty. She noted that the hands-on workshop for students to learn about a research methodology that is not accessible in their home institutions made it especially meaningful.

The organizers agreed to convene the second AJL conference in December 2017. (Tentative dates are December 8th to 10th.) Professor Lee hopes that other institutions in Asia will host future AJL conferences. He says that some students are already excitedly discussing what they would like to do at the next AJL meeting.