🗞️ EAP for Social Justice Newsletter #2 🌐 Please share with colleagues and networks digitally or pinned up on a noticeboard the old-fashioned way 📍

Pleased to share our first RefugEAP Programme impact report, detailing the impact that this free online trauma-informed academic English and skills programme for refugee-backround students across the UK has had over the past three years. Download here: le.ac.uk/-/media/uol/... @eap4sj.bsky.social

"The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or I.C.E., has aggressively moved to detain some students whose visas or residency status have been canceled by Mr. Rubio." tinyurl.com/2pbpm3w9

If you want a sneak preview of my book, Workable Accents, please click this link to read a decent chunk of the introductory chapter: shorturl.at/MfGLQ Please remember to ask your university or local library to order a copy and share this post widely! Thanks in advance!

Join us for our pre-symposium event on the 27th of May! @elinet-lsj.bsky.social

Steven Pinker spent the last several years framing those of us who disagreed with views as a “woke mob” attacking his free speech, which laid the foundation for the fascist takeover of higher education he now laments.

"Even as other symbols of the United States — Hollywood, for example, or iPhones — lost their cachet for many Chinese, American universities remained a source of aspiration, even veneration [...] Schools like Harvard were an exception." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/w... @harvard.edu

📢 Are you a UCU member or representative working in English for Academic Purposes?🎓 ✉️ Join the UCU working group by emailing Angela Hulme: [email protected] @ucu.org.uk @teflunion.bsky.social #UCU #EAP #HigherEd

For lovers of podcasts and social justice: My colleague @severyandyakonov.bsky.social has interviewed Canadian doctor Yipeng Ge, who went to Gaza on a humanitarian mission and was suspended from his university. Public history at its best. Please share! creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

👥 Seats still available for this public seminar on futures of linguistic justice 🗣️ @iancushing.bsky.social @goldsmithsuol.bsky.social

This week, I spoke with one of the Duolingo contractors impacted by its 'new' AI strategy, and they clarified that 1) it's not new. Duolingo has *already* fired an estimated 100 writers and translators. 2) they worked for months training an AI system that still makes egregious mistakes.

36% of lecturers describe themselves as frequent users of generative AI tools. Is this the beginning of the botification and self-alienation of academics? Initial reflections on today's article by @kashhill.bsky.social from @biblioracle.bsky.social

"Universities are bureaucratic messes sometimes and struggle to provide equitable access. But they were our messes—governed by scholars, accountable to professional standards, not political agendas. It was what made the university worth defending." @nelsonlflores.bsky.social www.bit.ly/4kg9yU3

“Top five AI uses for students were writing-centered: –starting papers and projects (49%); –summarizing long texts (48%); –brainstorming creative projects (45%); –exploring new topics (44%); –and revising writing (44%)”

🤖 "AI models produce a monolithic version of English that erases variation, excludes minoritised and regional voices, and reinforces unequal power dynamics[...] The AI ecosystem is multilingual in theory, but monolingual in practice." 🇺🇸 theconversation.com/ai-systems-a... @celesterl.bsky.social

"Foreign students who have studied for degrees in the UK will face tighter rules over their right to remain after finishing university." "Dependants will be expected to pass the more advanced English A2 test." www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

✂️ Concerned about the cuts, redundancies and 'restructuring' facing our sector? You're not alone! Colleagues at BALEAP are collating resources on this Padlet 📚 padlet.com/alhulme1/ide...

BALEAP has expressed dismay by recent news of increasing threats to centres and lecturers in English for Academic Purposes across the UK ✂️ See below for full statement and commitments from their executive commitee 📣 @teflunion.bsky.social

Special issue on 'Education, Antiracism & Decoloniality' from ESC ✊ Multilingual and open-access with some very relevant reflexions for EAP practitioners 👇 www.up.pt/journals/ind... @ces-uc.bsky.social l @sumingkhoo.bsky.social

In between bites of al pastor tacos and sips of a margarita, Duolingo billionaire Luis von Ahn talks about how AI will make some jobs disappear. “It’s a tough situation that'll affect the poor, the less educated. And not just in the U.S., but in poor countries.” Free: archive.ph/2024.09.24-1...

New on the Language on the Move @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social: why its important to find better ways to work with atypical language users and to train interpreters to work with atypical language users www.languageonthemove.com/the-case-for...

More amazing work on postdigital classrooms! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Join our upcoming event: "Language as power: The role of linguistic gatekeeping in research with international students" led by Akanksha Dochania (University of Delhi) 23 May 2025 13:00 – 14:00 IST / 8:30 – 9:30 am GMT Online via Zoom Register at: zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Reminder: our unmissable online roundtable on the crisis in UK HE and how/whether it's fixable. We'll be hearing from @gunjans.bsky.social, @ronaldhartz.bsky.social, Kalpana Shankar, Susan Robertson, before opening up the discussion. #academicsky #highereducation www.lancaster.ac.uk/educational-...

*Shifting Power in Language Learning & Applied Linguistics with GenAI* The conference is inspired by the Shifting Power project (shiftingpower.kmi.open.ac.uk) and the Radical AI Network (www.nature.com/articles/d41...) #GenAI #EuroCall #CallForProposals #CfP eurocall-languages.org/events/genai...

Interested in answers to this: "A friend contacted me about their supervisor possibly using AI to give feedback on their dissertation (feedback shows 100% AI generated on checks + makes very little sense in context)" sciences.social/@kavana@scho... @academic-chatter.bsky.social #AcademicChatter

I think the whole notion of learner-centredness is now irredeemably corrupted by neoliberal thought and its offshoots, and will never prove truly liberatory with its lack of structural critique, its atomising epistemology, & its failure to locate itself in colonial/class struggle, amongst others

This Tuesday @uni-hamburg.de: What constitutes a language barrier and what are their consequences for individual health outcomes and group health disparities? www.ew.uni-hamburg.de/forschung/fa...

‘A Linguistics of the Oppressed’ Brilliant new open-access zine from Sol Tovar addressing a range of contemporary critical concerns heyzine.com/flip-book/eb... @soltovar.bsky.social

🗓️ Mark your calendars! We're hosting a social & meet-up in London on May 2nd. Doors open at 6:30 PM at the May Day Rooms. Bring your workmates! (No managers, please!) teflworkersunion.org...

New article in the #baleap Journal of Research & Practice! We explore trioethnography, rhizomatic analysis & blackout poetry as creative tools for resistance, growth & collaboration in EAP. Read here: reinventionjournal.org/index.php/ba... #EAP #BALEAP

Some brilliant speakers now confirmed for the Social Justice in ELT symposium: 📅 Date: 30-31 May 2025 📍 Location: BAHÇESEHIR UNIVERSITY, Istanbul, Turkey www.socialjusticeinelt.com/Home/Symposi... @elinet-lsj.bsky.social

It was a conference that centres a scholarship of heartbreak. I am humbled to share my invited plenary contribution on women and culture with incredible women at the Rebuilding HE in Gaza Conference at Hamad Bin Khalifa Uni. youtu.be/02usb_PKWQI?si…

🌟Stars of the Social Justice SIG at BALEAP 2025 with our new banner and newsletter🪧 @paulbreenauthor.bsky.social @wilhardman.bsky.social

"Labels dehumanise us and inevitably lead to deficit narratives" 🗣️ Ramzi Merabet's brilliant keynote at BALEAP 2025 problematizing the 'international student' label 🏷️ @ramzimerabet.bsky.social @wilhardman.bsky.social

📰 Launch of new BALEAP journal whose first issue features papers from last conference at Warwick University 🏫

An overview of the brilliant Feminism X EAP slow conference from last year with Sanchia Rodrigues and our own Iwona Winiarska-Pringle at BALEAP 2025

Kindness in EAP with Jenna Mettlemeier at BALEAP 2025. Some provocative questions:

🗣️ Voices from the Other Side of Hope: Writing as Activism Podcast ✊ m.soundcloud.com/artshumlaw/v... Hear from 4 refugee/migrant-background authors, including Palestinian-British academic & poet Dr Khawla Badwan’s (8:47-20:30) ❤️🍉 @uolappliedling.bsky.social @khawlabadwan.bsky.social

📢 From activism to actionable: Paul and Wil leading a well-attended world café on social justice at BALEAP 2025 conference today ⚖️ @wilhardman.bsky.social @paulbreenauthor.bsky.social

BALEAP 2025 kicks off in Plymouth with a student-teacher panel on core themes of the conference: Collaboration, Co-creation & Community 🙌 What support structures work for international students? Buddy systems, social events, writing cafés, digital support, mentoring ❔ @plymuni.bsky.social

📰 EAP for Social Justice quarterly newsletter for Jan-Mar 2025 is now out. ⚖️ Catch up on the wonderful events our team have made happen so far this year! @wilhardman.bsky.social @alekspalanac.bsky.social @paulbreenauthor.bsky.social #EAP4SJ #SocialJustice #EAP

Social Justice group ready for the BALEAP 2025 Conference! ⚖️✊ Our very own @wilhardman.bsky.social modelling our brand new banner

📝 Do you have 15-20m to take part in a survey on Linguistic Justice in English for Academic Purposes? 🔗 Access the survey just here: forms.office.com/Pages/Respon...

Next talk in the Leicester Applied Linguistics Guest Speakers: Sinfree Makoni on Waterscape epistemologies, waves of knowing and translanguaging as wet ontology: Developing a southern epistemological approach to sociolinguistics. 2 April 2025 / 13.00 UK shorturl.at/x0SaH

🎥 Webinar Recording 🎥 Prof. Bridget Goodman discusses cariño pedagogy, raciolinguistics, and academic literacies 📚 From Mama Bear to Tough Love and Beyond 👉 Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm99... #Raciolinguistics #EAP @bridgetelf.bsky.social @multi-ling-mat.bsky.social