English in Cameroon

CALL FOR PAPERS

International Symposium, Yaoundé-Cameroon

July 20-22, 2015

Theme

Academic Writing Across Disciplines: socializing junior scientists in the discourses of research, and maximizing their changes for successful Humboldt Applications

Description:

The African-German Network Centre for Academic Writing Excellence in the Humanities (AGNETA)—a network of scholars with members in Cameroon, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, and Germany—is organizing a small in-group International Symposium on Academic Writing Across Disciplines (ISAWAD 2015) in Yaoundé, July 20-22, 2015. This event will bring together senior academics and junior scientists (i.e. PhD students + aspiring postdocs) from the five African countries and Germany to discuss disciplinary and interdisciplinary discourse communities and conventions in academic writing, focusing on practical issues of academic research and project writing for junior scientists. AGNETA aims to mentor junior scientists in their long trajectory of manuscript conception, preparation and publication, so that they can qualify to compete in the scholarship programmes of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, in the long run. Discussions will cover a wider scope of academic research themes, including but not limited to textual routines and writing practices in the disciplines: the case of linguistics, theatre arts, cinematography, fine arts, and film studies, geography etc. ICAWAD 2015 will anchor on five key points:

PhD students present aspects of their on-going research to a wider audience and receive feedback;
Aspiring postdocs present their research projects and/or ideas to a wider audience and receive feedback;
Both (1) and (2) take part in interactive workshops which develop their understanding and implementation of the following academic skills: (a) formulating a relevant (in ‘real world’ or ‘academic field’) research idea; (b) writing in the language of the discipline;
Senior academics share their publication experiences, and present papers covering a wide range of topics that initiate junior scientists to the linguistic, organisational or genre-specific structures of different text types in the disciplines ; and
Sponsorship programmes of the Humboldt Foundation are presented.

You are invited to submit an abstract of not more than 300 words to: nkemlekedan@yahoo.com on or before December 31, 2014, to be part of the meeting.
The abstracts will be reviewed by a scientific team (ST) of 5 (see below) on the basis of relevance to symposium theme and/or objectives.
Authors of abstracts that will be recommended by the ST will be informed by March 1, 2015, and a copy of the programme will be sent to them.
A symposium volume will be published in July-August, 2016 by Cuvillier Velag Göttingen under the REAL Studies Series of the Department of English, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. This means that participants have to up-date their presentations in a publishable form and submit for review on or before March 15, 2016, at the latest. Instructions for manuscript preparation will be available after the symposium event in July 2015.