This year Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh was host to the annual British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) Conference so I headed north to run our stand and enjoy a few days in Scotland.
We’ve had a busy summer and published quite a number of books in the past few months so this was reflected at the conference: delegates streamed to our stand to browse the new publications which were making their first conference appearance – among the popular books were Blommaert’s Ethnography, Superdiversity and Linguistic Landscapes and Ramanathan’s Language Policies and (Dis)Citizenship.
The welcome reception on the first evening was doubly exciting. Not only was there a string quartet and whisky tasting for the delegates to enjoy, but also the announcement of the BAAL Book Prize 2013. We were delighted for our author Alastair Pennycook, as his book Language and Mobility is the joint winner of this year’s award. Sadly Alastair wasn’t present to celebrate his achievement, but I was delighted to accept the cheque and toast his success with some raspberry gin in his place!
Apart from the conference I had fun exploring Edinburgh in the evenings. The centre and castle were beautiful in the end of summer dusky light and I made a special trip to the Elephant Café where JK Rowling spent a lot of time when she was writing the first Harry Potter book. To see the full selection of my photos from the trip please visit our Facebook page here.
Laura
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