Join us for the first event of the Erasmus+ Project: Critical Language Awareness, Democratic Engagement, and Sustainability (CLADES). The main theme of the CLADES Conference 2025 is “Speaking for Change. Speaking about Change”, and it will take place on 24–25 February 2025 in Groningen, The Netherlands.
Please register for the Congress-1, and specific Serious Games sessions and Workshops using this form.
DAY 1: February 24, 2025
09.00 – 09.30 Walk in
09.30 – 10.00 Welcome to Clades 2025
10.00 – 11.00 Keynote 1 by Wakanyi Hoffman
11.00 – 11.15 Coffee Break
11.15 – 13:30 Serious GAMES session / parallel sessions (registration required)
| Room 1 | Room 2 | Room 3 | Room 4 |
| Constellation | Lego Serious Play | Check the label boardgame | Kosmopolit |
Conducted by Erica E.C. Harpe | Conducted by Orrie Staschen (with the guidance of Mariana Markantoni) | Conducted by Marieke Wieringa | Conducted by Matthew Pattemore |
13.30 – 14.30 LUNCH
14.30 – 15.30 Keynote 2 by Dorothy Thunder and Randy Morin
15.30 – 15.50 Refreshments
15.50 – 17.30 Final plenary and networking: What have we learned? Hosted by E. Darics and J. Olthof
DAY 2: February 25, 2025
09.00 – 09.30 Walk in
09.30 – 13.30 Academic presentations
Please note: Presentations have been randomly assigned to tracks to encourage discussion across disciplines and enable the emergence of converging problem solving for various aspects of the polycrisis.Talks cover the following broad topics:
◉ Power: Language as a tool for reinforcing or challenging power structures, shaping perception, and influencing decisions.
◉ Social Change: Communication in public speaking, media, activism, and persuasion as forces that transform society.
◉ Representation: The role of language in constructing cultural identity, gender expression, indigenous & minority languages, and perceptions of bias.
◉ Technology: AI, computational linguistics, and LLMs reshaping language use, learning, and digital interaction.
◉ Environment & ethics: Sustainability, environmental justice, and ethical business practices through the lens of language.
◉ Education: Pedagogy, critical literacy, coaching, and language learning as foundations for knowledge and communication.
◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉ ◉
| Room 1 | Room 2 | Room 3 | |
| 9.30-10.00 | Nicolina Montesano Montessori Critical Language Awareness, Citizenship and the Voice of Nature ◉◉ | Bettina van Hoven, Anna Fornari, CJ Hickey, Josephine Berghorn, Mara van Hermon, Sven Overbeeke, Caitlin van Hoven, and Ilse van Dijk Learning from the W̱SÁNEĆ: Language Revival and Decolonizing Education ◉◉ | |
| 10.00-10.30 | Leonidas Zotos Using LLMs to Explore Framing of Events in Educational Contexts ◉◉ | Arran Stibbe Towards a Grammar of Enchantment ◉◉ | Laura Robaey Gender-Inclusive Language in Multilingual, Gender-Sensitive Contexts ◉ ◉ |
| 10.30-11.00 | Walter Giordano Communication strategies in prescription drug advertising: Ethics and “sustainability” ◉◉ | Chloé Lybaert & Sarah Van Hoof Students’ attitudes towards university lecturers’ language use and ethnicity: A contextualised speaker evaluation experiment ◉◉ | Hanna Sofia Rehnberg The Struggle for Collaboration Between Researchers and Practitioners: Challenges and the Satisfaction of Knowledge Exchange Finally Taking Place ◉◉ |
11.00 – 11.30 Coffee Break
11.30 – 13:30 Academic presentations Round 2
| Room 1 | Room 2 | Room 3 | |
| 11.30-12.00 | Orrie Staschen Doing Critical Literacy: A Case Study of UCT Graduate School of Business MPhil Students in Cape Town, South Africa ◉◉ | Matt Drury Sustainability, Language, Impact! ◉◉ | Michael Burke Social change through public speaking: Empowering primary school children in economically and socially challenged circumstances to thrive through language ◉◉ |
| 12.00-12.30 | Aurélie Joubert & Marcela Huilcán ‘Indigenous’ European Languages: Reflections on cultural appropriation and global minoritisation practice ◉ ◉ | Bernard De Clerck & Lotte Remue Looks, likes and language: Does beauty still boost business? ◉◉ | Francesca Padovani How Can Machines Be Taught Language More Efficiently, Mirroring the Natural Processes of Young Learners? ◉◉ |
| 12.30-13.00 | Marie-Louise Brunner Shaping public perception of sustainability efforts: A study of Instagram business accounts from the food industry ◉◉ | Olga Abreu Fernandes Coaching Lab: Re-shaping stories, transforming experience, capturing change ◉◉ | John Hoeks & Janette Bosma The persuasive power of poetry ◉◉ |
| 13.00-13.30 | Marc Pauly Speaking to Nature: A Dialogical Philosophy Perspective ◉◉ | Frank Hindriks Language For and Against Social Change ◉◉ | Hanne Verhaegen A Thematic Analysis of Attitudes Towards Gender-Neutral Pronouns in Dutch ◉◉ |
13.30 – 14.30 LUNCH
14.30 – 16.00 Workshop / parallel sessions (registration required)
- “The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) and the transformative potential of language awareness” conducted by Erika Darics
- “Critical Textbook Lab: Uncovering Ideologies in Educational Materials” conducted by Joanna Chojnicka
- “Communicating Sustainability: Avoiding Fluffy Language” conducted by Greta Zella and María Pilar Uribe Silva
- “Hate speech” conducted by Dimitris Serafis
- “Voices of the Future? Children as Rhetorical Climate Activists” conducted by Jelte Olthof
16.00 – 17.00 Panel discussion
17.00 – 18.00 Drinks and conversation