Innaugural Workshop of the Young Africanists' Research Network
Short Title: YARN 2026

Date: 19-Mar-2026 - 20-Mar-2026
Location: Göttingen, Germany
Contact: Madeline Ladore
Contact Email: [email protected]
Meeting URL: https://youngafricanists.wordpress.com/

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Language Documentation; Linguistic Theories; Typology

Submission Deadline: 15-Oct-2025

The goal of the Young Africanists’ Research Network (YARN) is to highlight linguistic research being done on African languages and the early-career scholars behind this work. We also seek to foster collaboration and discussion surrounding theoretical and methodological issues in our field.

To meet this aim, we are hosting our inaugural workshop on March 19th-20th, 2026 at the University of Göttingen.

Invited Speakers:
Mary Amaechi -University of Ilorin (Nigeria) / University of Bielefeld (Germany)
Felix Ameka – Leiden University (Netherlands)

We invite early-career researchers (advanced graduate students, PhD and post-docs) to submit their current research on any African language in any subfield of linguistics (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics or psycholinguistics). We are also especially interested in submissions concerning fieldwork and data-processing methodologies.

All abstracts should be anonymous and in PDF format. Submissions should be no longer than one A4-page, with font size 11, though a second page may be used for references, figures, and as many lines as there are lines of glosses and translations of examples. Examples must be glossed and integrated into the main text. Authors may submit up to two abstracts for consideration.

The deadline for submissions is October 15th, 2025.

Abstracts can be submitted through EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=yarn2026