This workshop presents the main results of the Leverhulme Research Leadership Award Project “At the Crossroads: investigating the unexplored sides of multilingualism”. Over five years, project members have conducted in-depth research on linguistic, cognitive and social aspects of language use and on language ideologies in a thickly multilingual village setting in Senegal, and we’re delighted to share some of our central findings in three thematic sessions. The first session, in the afternoon of December 10, looks at the relationships between reified imaginations of language and multilingual discourse. The morning session of December 11 is dedicated to the language-independent education programme that grew out of the project’s research. The afternoon session of December 11 showcases sociolinguistic research on repertoires and on the expression of motion in multilingual individuals’ speech and gesture.  The workshop is open to the public. If you plan to attend, please email fl2@soas.ac.uk. A SOAS campus map can be found here.

December 10
Language, land and (trans)languaging at the Crossroads
Discussants: Harri Englund (Cambridge) and Chege Githiora (SOAS)
Attention, room change: SOAS, room 4429 (SOAS main building)

15:00-15:45	Friederike Lüpke:  Language, code-switching and (trans)languaging: from either or to when and why
15:45-16:30	Alexander Cobbinah ‘Zero objects in the Casamance’
16:30-16:45	Break
16:45-17:30	Rachel Watson: ‘Different types of multilingual Joola discourse in Brin’
17:30-18:00	Discussion

December 11
Language-independent literacies and multilingual education: the LILIEMA programme
Discussants: Julia Sallabank (SOAS) and Sheena Shah (U Hamburg)
SOAS, room S313 (Senate House)

10:00-10:45	Friederike Lüpke: An introduction to the LILIEMA programme
10:45-11:30	Break
11:30-12:15	Jérémie Sagna & Miriam Weidl: LILIEMA on the ground: implementation, experiences, challenges, outcomes
12:15-13:00	Discussion

December 11
Places and people: situated multilingual discourse
Discussants: Pierpaolo di Carlo (SUNY Buffalo), Kristin Vold Lexander (MultiLing Oslo) and Klaus Beyer (Goethe University Frankfurt)
SOAS, room S315 (Senate House)

15:00-15:45	Samantha Goodchild: Sociolinguistic spaces and multilingualism: practices and perceptions in Essyl, Senegal
15:45-16:30	Miriam Weidl: The role of Wolof in the multilingual repertoires in the Casamance: fluidity of linguistic repertoires
16:30-16:45	Break
16:45-17:15	Chelsea Krajcik: Exploring the multilingual mind in speech and gesture: focus on West Africa
17:15-18:00	Research visions and perspectives for the study of African multilingualism: Klaus Beyer,  Pierpaolo di Carlo, Sheena Shah, Kristin Vold Lexander
18:00-20:00	Drinks and nibbles in room T404 (22 Russell Square)