Conferences & Workshops

This page is for the announcement of events we think are related to LADO and of interest to the field, some of them organised by LARG members. Please send your announcements to LARG or the convenors for posting. We may also post some archive material about conferences past.

Upcoming Events:

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Recent:

• 24 November 2012 - University of Essex, UK:

ESRC LADO Seminar #4: "Best Practice in LADO: The Way Forward"

This seminar brought together members of groups including:

• linguistic experts with first-hand experience in LADO and related areas such as forensic linguistics,

• senior government staff in immigration and asylum bureaux,

• asylum and immigration judges,

• legal experts in migration and asylum law,

• human rights practitioners, and

• academics of other disciplines with experience in asylum contexts.

The goals were to bring users into the process created by LARG, to hear about the needs of users, and to discuss the preliminary results of the first three meetings with parties who could contribute to the development, implementation and evaluation of sound policy in this area. We shared advice and experience in order to advance the understanding and institutional recognition of best-practice standards in LADO. Participants were invited based on their experience and interest in legal, policy and/or expertise aspects of the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) process. The session included exchanges with and commentary by participating bureaus and experts, followed by discussion considering general issues of quality development and control.

• Information on this seminar can be found at this link.

• 7 June 2012 - University of Essex, UK:

ESRC LADO Seminar #3 "Issues of Expertise and Recognition of Professional Standards"

This seminar brought together members of groups including:

• language experts with experience in gaining recognition for professional guidelines in non-academic settings;

• professionals knowledgeable about expertise issues in forensic and asylum contexts (from anthropology, psychoanalytic studies, interpreting, medicine and law);

• linguists and practitioners specifically involved with LADO, and

• participants from legal, NGO and government backgrounds engaged in refugee status determination (RSD).

The goal was to identify pathways and pitfalls, share advice and experience, in order to advance understanding, and ultimately institutional recognition, of best-practice standards in LADO. This included the professional recognition of scientifically-qualified linguist experts in LADO by asylum tribunals, along lines familiar in forensic linguistic practice generally.

• Information on this seminar can be found at this link. 

• 12-15 April 2012 - Rochester Institute of Technology, USA

"Refugees, Asylum Law, and Expert Testimony: The Construction of Africa & the Global South in Comparative Perspective"

Expert testimony in support of, and occasionally in opposition to, asylum petitions and refugee status determination, features prominently in North American and European courts and elsewhere. Organizers are interested in new research exploring the construction of expertise and the emergence of ideas and the production of knowledge about Africa and the comparative Global South in the context of asylum petitions and refugee status determinations.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to (...selected):

• the emergence and constitutionality of new legal venues for asylum and refugee status;

• the legal basis of credibility and/or plausibility;

• the determination of and granting of standing as an expert;

• the emergence of specialized industries and new academic sub-disciplines, including, but not limited to ‘forensic linguistic’ analysis and country of origin research.

For more details please visit this link. The Conable Conference in International Studies is convened by Benjamin N. Lawrance, Barber B. Conable, Jr. Endowed Chair of International Studies, RIT.

2011:

• 26 Nov 2011 - ESRC LADO Seminar #2: "The Role of Native Speakers in LADO"

  • Information on this seminar can now be found at this link. 

• 28 July 2011 meeting at IAFPA, Vienna, AT

• 11-14 July 2011 session at IAFL, Birmingham, UK

• 17 June 2011 - ESRC LADO Seminar #1, "Data Elicitation for LADO"

  • Information on this seminar can now be found at this link.

28 July 2011 satellite meeting at IAFPA

A satellite meeting on 28 July 2011, hosted by the Acoustics Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OAW), in conjunction with the 2011 annual meeting of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA) from 24-28 July, was held in Vienna, Austria.

• Further information on IAFPA 2011 webpage.

The satellite meeting was devoted to the elicitation of forensic speech samples. This includes both interviews for language analysis for the determination of origin (LADO), and reference recordings of suspects for speech sample comparisons. It was organised by Tina Cambier-Langeveld and Peter Gottschligg.

• For information see the satellite meeting webpage.

11-14 July 2011 IAFL-10 conference, Birmingham, UK

LADO Colloquium at IAFL-10 Conference

The International Association of Forensic Linguists Tenth Biennial Conference, was held at Aston University in Birmingham, UK, in conjunction with the Centre for Forensic Linguistics.

Among other events, IAFL-10 featured a symposium on LADO issues organised by Dr. Diana Eades, co-convenor of LARG. You can access a description of the symposium and its papers (near bottom of this IAFL-10 abstracts page). The speakers included independent academics and members of three prominent commercial LADO agencies.

In addition, Prof. Peter L. Patrick, co-convenor of LARG, delivered a plenary address on LADO issues to IAFL-10 on 14 July.