Multilingual academic and professional communication in a networked world AELFE-TAPP Conference 2021. Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain.

University of Limerick scholars presented their research at the joint AELFE-TAPP Conference that took place in July (7th-9th) at the Univetsitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Vilanova i la Geltrud, Spain. This joint conference brought together the 19th annual conference of AELFE (Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos/European Association of Languages for Specific Purposes) and the 2nd Conference of the Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project (TAPP), a growing virtual exchange network that has developed transnational collaborative projects on specialised communication, translation and user experience. The combination of both conferences allowed participants to link the fields of languages for specific purposes (LSP) and telecollaboration/virtual exchange. The title of this year’s conference Multilingual academic and professional communication in a networked world was closely aligned to some of the research areas of the School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics (MLAL). Three papers were presented from MLAL staff (Dr Liam Murray, Dr Marta Giralt and Marta Fuertes), which revolved around different aspects of language learning in the business discipline, intercultural competence development in virtual exchange and teaching stylistic appreciation and literary criticism using blogs. One of the papers presented was submitted for publication in the peer-reviewed proceedings of the conference and can be accessed  here, while another extends research from a recently published chapter  in a Springer volume dedicated to teaching literature in virtual environments.