CfP: Language Education in the Age of AI: Applications and Implications (Bozen-Bolzano, 23 Oct 2026)
Language Education in the Age of AI:
Applications and Implications
23 October 2026
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Italy)
Keynote Speakers:
Daniela Tafani (University of Pisa)
Rodney Jones (University of Reading)
Generative artificial intelligence—especially large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini—has disrupted education and most other sectors of society to the extent that the public release of ChatGPT on 30 November 2022 will likely be regarded as a major turning point in the history of digital technology, comparable in cultural impact to the advents of the personal computer, the World Wide Web, social media, and the smartphone. After four years of widespread public adoption, the initial optimism and anxieties surrounding generative AI are gradually giving way to more realistic expectations. As institutional policies and pedagogical practices emerge, so do clearer understandings of the opportunities, risks, and responsibilities associated with AI in teaching and learning.
Educators must confront a plethora of negative consequences—not to mention the new terminology—of mass public use of AI in and outside the classroom, including AI slop, AI fatigue, shallow learning, deskilling, AI inbreeding (or the self-consuming loop), AI plagiarism, AI-assisted cheating, mass surveillance, cognitive automation, algorithmic bias, and AI inequality. Yet there is also a growing consensus that institutional policies and classroom practices must strike a careful balance between the prohibition of AI misconduct and the encouragement of ethical adoption and responsible use.
If the goal of education is to prepare learners for the world and if AI truly is the driver of the 4th Industrial Revolution, it could be argued that educators have an inherent obligation to engage critically with AI technologies, foster AI literacy in their teaching, and strive to mitigate the risks of AI displacement and technological unemployment for their learners. This obligation is decidedly pronounced in language education, given the profound impacts—positive and negative—that AI may have on real-world communication (e.g., AI-mediated communication, linguistic homogenization, universal translation, language democratization, synthetic text saturation). Simultaneously, educational institutions and educators would be wise to consider the individual decisions of colleagues and learners who reject technology and opt to embrace analogue living, for example.
The aim of this in-person, international conference is to explore the opportunities, risks, and responsibilities associated with the use of artificial intelligence in language education. How does AI change the role of human language teachers? How does it change the needs and strategies of learners? What pedagogical practices and institutional policies are emerging?
We invite contributions that showcase innovative research and practices while critically examining the legal, ethical, pedagogical, and psychological impacts of human–machine interaction and collaboration in language teaching and learning.
Thematic areas include, but are not limited to:
• language instruction (e.g., materials writing, classroom management, instructional support);
• learner autonomy (e.g., data-driven learning, intelligent tutoring, metacognitive support),
• language assessment (e.g., test development, automated scoring, diagnostic testing),
• teacher research (e.g., reflective practice, needs analysis, corpus linguistics),
• program administration (e.g., curriculum monitoring, workflow automation, AI policies).
Accepted presentations will be considered for publication in the conference proceedings.
Colleagues interested in presenting should submit abstracts of no more than 250 words (in English, German, or Italian) completing this form by 1 July 2026. All submissions will undergo double blind review.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent in August.
There are no conference fees or publication fees for this event. Remote presentations will not be considered.
Please send inquiries to LanguageCentreEvents@unibz.it.
CfP: Language Education in the Age of AI: Applications and Implications (Bolzano, 23 Oct 2026)
136.74 KB 5 downloads ...