Full Title: Discoveries and Insights in Skills Training in Intergenerational Language Sustainability Conference
Short Title: DISTILS-01
Theme: Conceptions of Intergenerational Language Sustainability Skills Training: Best Practices and Innovations

Date: 04-May-2026 - 08-May-2026
Location: Edmonton, Canada
Contact Person: Darren Flavelle
Meeting Email: [email protected]
Web Site: https://www.instils.org/distils

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics

Call Deadline: 16-Jan-2026

Call for Papers:

INSTILS – the International Network for Skills Training in Intergenerational Language Sustainability – invites you to its inaugural conference on Discoveries and Insights in Skills Training in Intergenerational Language Sustainability (DISTILS-01).
A key element of intergenerational language sustainability is building capacity within communities to define and meet their own language goals. To support these aspirations, numerous programs and initiatives (including CoLang, ELDP, AILDI, NILI, CILLDI, and others) have been developed around the world to offer skills training and support to communities in various areas, including language documentation, pedagogical methods, materials development, and community language planning, to name just a few.

Despite this, the language revitalization literature has paid comparatively little attention to critically analyzing these skills or the ways in which they are taught. As a result, the very notion of an ILS skill remains undertheorized, and a wide range of essential questions remain unanswered, including:
- What are the ILS skills that communities most need? How might these differ between communities at different stages of language endangerment, or in different places across the globe?
- How can these skills be identified, categorized, and prioritized?
- What methods are most effective for providing this skills training in a diverse range of learning environments?
- How can that knowledge be used to strengthen existing ILS skills-training programs, and support the development of new ones?

This conference seeks to advance the theorization of ILS skills and to lay a foundation for the further exploration of these questions.

Workshop:
Following the conference, INSTILS will host a two-day Workshop, May 7-8, where we will:
- synthesize the findings presented at the conference
- explore opportunities for research collaboration
- prepare the outline for a forthcoming edited volume
- highlight upcoming funding opportunities
- discuss creating a formal structure for the Network

DISTILS-01 welcomes presentations on this year's theme of “Conceptions of Intergenerational Language Sustainability Skills Training: Best Practices and Innovations”, especially those reporting on research around the skills needed for the maintenance, revitalization and revival of minoritized languages, including studies on the methods for building ILS capacity within communities.

Presenters will be allotted a 30 minute time slot, 20 minutes for their presentation and 10 minutes for questions.

Abstract Guidelines:
Abstracts should be no more than 500 words (excluding references). Submissions must be anonymous. Each author may submit a maximum of two (2) abstracts, with no more than one (1) being single-authored. Abstracts should be in English.

Easychair Link for Abstracts: https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=distils01

Deadline for abstract submission: January 16, 2026
Notification of Acceptance/Rejection: February 6, 2026