Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice Conference

We are pleased to announce the call for proposals for the 17th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice (ALAPP), hosted by Adelaide University, Adelaide, South Australia from 28-30 September 2027. The conference will be held entirely in person.

ALAPP aims to bring together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds, especially language and communication research and professional domains (e.g., business, organization studies, education, banking, health care, therapy, journalism, law, social care and welfare, immigration and border control, police work, translation and interpreting) to share ideas and discuss innovations and interventions.

Important Dates

• Call opens October 1, 2026
• Submission Deadline: December 20, 2026 (midnight EST)
• Abstracts Acceptance Letters: Early April
• Early Registration: June 1, 2027
• Regular Registration: August 15, 2027
• In-Person Registration: On-site September 24, 2027
• Late Registration is open from August 16 to September 1, 2027.

Conference Themes

ALAPP 2027 is open to proposals that broadly fall within the scope of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice Studies. We welcome submissions on a wide range of themes, including:

• Language, communication, and the professions
• Health care communication
• Institutions and professions
• Expertise and professional practice
• Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in professional contexts
• Multimodality in professional practice
• Professional practice, discourse, and the new media
• Interpreting and translation in institutional/professional settings
• Language awareness and reflexivity in the professions
• Communication training for professionals
• Professional practice and communication in the age of globalization
• Artificial intelligence and professional practice
• Ethical conduct in professional practice
• Research methodologies and research ethics

We particularly welcome submissions on the following special themes:

• Collaborative research across professional boundaries
• Challenges in communicating research findings
• Translating research into professional practice 
• Communicative expertise in changing professional contexts 

Submission Guidelines

For all submissions, please include the following information:

• Abstract title, author names, and full institutional affiliations of the responsible (presenting) author and collaborating authors.
• Contact e-mail address for the responsible author.
• Up to three conference themes (feel free to indicate themes beyond the list above).

Proposals include panels, individual presentations (oral or poster) and work-in-progress sessions.

Proposal review and selection criteria

All proposals, except panel proposals, undergo a double-blind peer-review process. For panels, the reviewers will have access to the names of the panel coordinators and the panelists.

Please note that the ALAPP conference policy is one main oral presentation per presenter. You may choose to submit more than one proposal, but normally only one proposal will be accepted for oral presentation. An additional accepted proposal may be presented as a poster. Any individual presenter - even as part of a team - is limited to one oral presentation and one poster presentation. The policy of 'one oral presentation per participant' is relaxed in the case of a second oral presentation in the invited forum.

There is no fixed format for writing proposals, but we suggest the following structure: Background (including findings from and absences in previous literature); Aims/Objectives (including research question); Methodology (research design, type of data, participants, analytical framework); Results/Findings; and Conclusion (including practical relevance).

Please note that the following criteria will form the basis for peer review:

• originality of the topic and its relevance to the conference
• background contextualization of the study
• relationship between title and content
• structural organization
• theoretical/methodological appropriateness
• clarity of claims and relevance

Individual panels are reviewed without anonymization in their entirety on the above criteria but also on the basis of their relevance to broader issues in communication, medicine, and ethics; the overall coherence of the proposal; and the usefulness of the panel to participants.

Decisions about acceptance/rejection will be communicated in April 2027. Following formal acceptance, the responsible (presenting) authors must register their participation.

Please, send an email to ALAPP2027@adelaide.edu.au for further details regarding submission guidelines, or for additional information about the conference.

Conference fees

Please check back here for a list of recommended hotels.

Local organising committee

Dr Kerrilee Lockyer
Dr Fiona O’Neill
Associate Professor Jonathan Crichton
Dr Amir Sheikhan

ALAPP Founder
Professor Srikant Sarangi

Please contact ALAPP2027@adelaide.edu.au if you have any questions.