Teaching Russian in Italy and Europe. Today
Short Title: SyllaRUS

Date: 16-Nov-2025 - 17-Feb-2026
Location: Verona, Italy
Contact: Daniele Artoni
Contact Email: [email protected]
Meeting URL: https://univr-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/daniele_artoni_univr_it/Eb-0Qm04cR1Kt3SdfiU1p6QBOhSciknNCHpjaoWSsWq6DA?e=P8T9TC

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Ling & Literature; Pragmatics; Text/Corpus Linguistics
Subject Language(s): Russian (rus)

Submission Deadline: 30-Nov-2025

Is the teaching of Russian in Italy and Europe today in crisis?

The large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and its global consequences on trade, tourism and, in general, on the perception and prestige of the Russian language, highlight the need to reflect on the challenges and prospects of teaching Russian in school and university contexts.
In addition to these factors, other broader socio-demographic elements contribute to the decrease in the number of potential learners, such as demographic decline and the falling interest in the humanities.

The conference ‘Teaching Russian in Italy and Europe. Today’ aims to reflect on and critically analyse the current situation, identifying strategies and methodologies to address these challenges, also in light of the critical debate that has influenced Slavic Studies at the international level over the past three years.

Contributions are invited for proposals of presentations (maximum duration 20 minutes) and posters, addressing the following topics:
- Teaching Russian and Russophone cultures and literatures
- Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language (РКИ)
- Teaching Russian as a Heritage Language
- Mapping Russian language teaching in schools and universities
- Syllabi for Russian language, literature, and culture teaching
- Decolonizing Russian language teaching
- Language policies and multilingualism as educational resources in schools and universities
- Teaching Russian L2 and intercomprehension among Slavic/other Slavic L3 languages
- Methodologies and tools for teaching Russian (textbooks, corpora, etc.)
- Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Artificial Intelligence in Russian language teaching
Abstracts of up to 500 words must be sent to [email protected] by no later than 30 November 2025.
Contributions in English, Italian, and Russian will be accepted.

The conference is supported by PRIN22 "SyllaRus – A teaching syllabus for the Russian language: reception, testing and extension" | Universities of Padova, Trento, and Verona