Home Language Research Conference in Estonia
by Dr Sabine Little
While the full title of this conference is a bit of a mouthful (Conference on Research on Social and Affective Factors in Home Language Maintenance and Development), the conference itself was perfectly sized: unlike big conventions where you can go days without seeing someone you know, the HOLM2023 conference originates from a Special Interest Group, making it small and bespoke, and giving it a wonderful ambience.
I travelled with Yue Zhou to present our ongoing work on “Growing up Multilingual with Chinese Heritage”, funded by the Chinese Heritage Language and Culture Fund. Specifically, we shared initial findings from our global call, which invites young people from Chinese heritage backgrounds (aged 11–18) to share their experiences — in any form they like. The contributions are powerful and emotional, leading to deep discussions. The call is still running, and open until the end of March — to participate, see here. The conference was a wonderful opportunity to share the project at international level, strengthening the “global” part of the call, with new connections made via conference participants.
The joy of a smaller conference is that you can see a larger percentage of sessions — with only one or two strands going on at the same time, this means good audiences for presentations, and a chance to carry on conversations during break time. One particular benefit of this particular conference was that time for concrete networking was built in: across the two days, time was spent first deciding on special interest/working groups, and then connecting within these groups and making plans for projects, bids, publications, etc. — so watch this space!
A huge thank you to the organisers — Anastassia Zabrodskaja and her team at the University of Tallinn, and Susana Eisenchlas and Andrea Schalley as organisers of the HOLM Special Interest Group. I can’t wait for the next conference!
Dr Sabine Little is Director of Education in The School of Education, The University of Sheffield.
