II Literacy Summit
10th to 12th of March, 2025
Literacy today – capabilities, practices as well as tools – experiences a thorough reconstruction. On the one hand, politicians and teachers complain about literacy competencies, on the other hand, (multilingual) literacy has become ever more important due to new communication tools. We additionally witness the integration of AI in the writing and reading processes, which can be a blessing or a curse.
These topics offer exciting opportunities for scientific and practice discussions, which we would like to have with you in Cologne in March 2025. If you are a literacy practitioner, researcher, software developer, or an ELN Partner, be sure to come to the 2nd Literacy Summit to dive into the exchange of best practices, scientific discoveries, apps, and actions in the literacy field. As you will experience in the II Summit, the relation between literacy, education and AI can be truly multiplying.
Keynote Speakers
Later literacy developments:
The case of analytic writing
Liliana Tolchinsky is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the University of Barcelona. Her professional career has spanned several continents, beginning at the University of Buenos Aires and continuing at Tel Aviv University before settling in Barcelona. Her research areas encompass the seeds of literacy across various writing systems and cultural contexts, extending to the developmental path towards text-literacy, a level of literacy that enables writing to become a tool for complex thought. Literacy is viewed as a key feature of later language developments —how school-age children and adolescents employ language in different communicative settings for varied purposes. Her work has been significantly supported by a Spencer Fellowship from the National Academy of Education, through her involvement in the groundbreaking cross-national Spencer Project (IP Ruth Berman), and by competitive grant funding from national agencies. She has been deeply committed to educational initiatives throughout her career, engaging in school supervision, initial and ongoing teacher training—even under conditions of extreme diversity—and actively promoting literacy programs in the workplace and academic writing at the university level.
Transversal Writing Skills, Transfer of Writing Skills. Empirical and Pedagogical Approaches to Exploring Plurilingual Writing Development
Dr. Nicole Marx is an applied linguist working in language learning and language teaching. She holds an M.A. in German Language and Literatures from Philipps University Marburg, Germany, and a B.A. with distinction in Psychology and German Language and Literature from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. In 2005, she earned her Ph.D. from the Technical University of Darmstadt in German Linguistics. Dr. Marx has been Professor of German as a Second Language since 2009 and is currently Full Professor at the University of Cologne.
She has led various research projects, including four scientific projects financed by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). She is currently leading a national research group on language(s) development of newly immigrated students and an international research group on language(s) learning and teaching for immigrant deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Her current research projects focus on language and literacy education for the specific group of newly arrived students in schools and their multilingual development.
Literacy is a Human Right – Achieving Exceptional Success for All Children with Literacy.IO Tools
Dr. Kausalai (Kay) Wijekumar is Houston Endowment Chair, Chancellor’s EDGES Fellow, and Director for the Center for Urban School Partnerships at Texas A&M University. She is a passionate advocate for all children and dedicates her research, development, and dissemination efforts to eradicating illiteracy. She has developed web-based intelligent tutoring systems for reading, writing, and science in English and Spanish. She has further developed and integrated teacher professional development systems using the AI and
web-based tools. To support the development, deployment, and research about these evidence-based practices in schools, she has secured over 80 million dollars in competitive grant funding from national agencies. Her work has been featured in the What Works Clearinghouse and US News and World Report. Her recent work integrates podcasts for families to encourage reading and writing at home. These podcasts are now available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. She is a musician, avid gardener, and world traveler.
Registration
Register here.
Early Bird Registration (until November 12th, 2024): 300 Euros (Regular); 200 Euros (Student); 400 Euros (Non-member)
Late Bird Registration (until January 10th, 2025): 400 Euros (Regular); 300 Euros (Student); 500 Euros (Non-member)
*Participants registering for the II ELN Summit who wish to become ELN members will benefit from ELN complimentary membership until the end of 2027. ELN members arising from low HDI, low GDP countries, or facing economic difficulties can ask for a 20% reduction in the fees above.
The 2nd Literacy Summit will take place at the University of Cologne. In this section, you will find information about the venue, (possible) accomodations and things you can do in Cologne.
July 26th: Deadline for submission of proposals
September 26th: Notification of the Scientific Committee decision
November 12th: End of early bird registration
January 10th: End of late registration
February 12th: Summit Program announcement
We are inviting proposals for the II Summit. Please feel free to distribute the call to those you think might be interested.
Download the Call for Papers as a PDF.
