Senior trainer Simon Dunton reflects on the 4th annual Education, Languages and Internationalisation Professional Network (ELIPro) conference.
The 4th annual ELIPro conference took place online on the 9th of October, followed by an in-person conference on the 15th and 16th of October, hosted by SDU University and KIMEP University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Held in partnership with the 12thInternational Conference Building Cultural Bridges (ICBCB), the conference theme was Multilingual Futures: Language, Identity & Educational Policy Across Borders.
It was a pleasure to attend both events, and to present in-person in Almaty. In this post, I’ll share a few of my highlights from ELIPro 2026.
International perspectives on EMI
Dr. Vlad Preda of the University of Craiova presented a paper online on how EMI shapes linguistic identities among Romanian computer science students. He reported that students see English as important in the IT sphere as it is used globally for both academic and professional purposes. However, it does not replace Romanian.
Dr. Preda works alongside Alina Resceanu, who we met at the 6th EMI Symposium in Oxford last year. She told us more about EMI in Romania as part of our In conversation with series.
In one of his several talks at the event, Dr. Paolo Delogu of St Andrews presented a paper in-person on EMI in China. He argued for the need to promote equal status between English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and content teachers. As I argued in my own talk (see below), this is an essential step in encouraging essential collaboration between teachers involved in EMI to better support their students.
Presenting online, Dr. Marcelo Kremer of Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC), suggested that EMI in Brazil is unusual in that it is not imposed by top-down policies. Given that it is instead driven and enacted by lecturers, he asked the question “why do lecturers in Brazilian public universities take on the extra burden of EMI, with no direct financial incentive and little or no institutional support?” His survey of 92 EMI Brazilian lecturers revealed no single dominant driver, but showed lecturers were aware of UFSC’s internationalisation policies and that they believe English could be useful for students’ future academic and professional careers.
I explored the Brazilian EMI landscape in more depth with Dr. Ron Martinez, which we will post as part of our In conversation with thread very soon.
In his in-person plenary speech, ELIPro founder Prof. Heath Rose (University of Oxford) explored, among other topics, the efficacy of EMI courses. Using a variety of key studies, including Dr. Ikuyu Aizawa’s work on EMI in Japan, he demonstrated that EMI students can meet the dual aims of mastering subject matter while improving English skills. However, as we note in our work, this requires extra effort from the students and, we would argue, EMI training for their teachers.
Prof. Rose questioned, however, whether students improve equally across all four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing), especially when they are not given enough opportunity to use, and therefore develop, productive skills (speaking and writing). He also stated that we need to, “move beyond proficiency in terms of what matters to ensure EMI success”, and focus also on supporting students to develop essential academic literacy skills.
Role of teacher professional development in EMI
In my own talk, I focussed on the need to include EAP teachers in EMI teacher training programmes. Bringing together both research and experience from Oxford EMI’s teacher training courses, I argued that by doing so, all teachers can reach an understanding about what EMI is in their context, and how can work together to better support the students they share, ultimately empowering all EMI teachers to foster multilingual professionals.
Oxford EMI Emerging Researcher Award
It was also my pleasure to present the Oxford EMI Emerging Researcher Award during the ELIPro closing ceremony. This year, the award went to Son Tung Bui a PhD student at Universität Münster who presented a paper on the effects of Global Englishes-informed pedagogy on Vietnamese university students’ perceptions.
On behalf of the whole team at Oxford EMI, I wish Tung all the best on his continuing PhD journey, and look forward to catching up in future.
Repositioning English in multilingual contexts
Interestingly, Prof. Ute Smit and Prof. Julia Hüttner (University of Vienna), who opened the online conference argued that English can, and perhaps should, be positioned as a vital tool for preparing students to become multilingual professionals. This can be done by 1) exposing learners to diverse varieties of English, which normalises multilingual communication in daily life and 2) using English for genuine communicative purposes tied directly to subject content, rather than isolated language practice.
These can both be met by well-designed and delivered EMI courses.
Similarly, ELIPro co-founder Nicola Galloway (University of Exeter) encouraged practitioners to position English as one of many options within a student’s broader linguistic repertoire. She highlighted that Kazakhstan, with its trilingual educational policy, offers an ideal setting to demonstrate how multiple languages can complement each other effectively.
These perspectives align closely with Oxford EMI’s core ethos.
International research from diverse perspectives
The conference brought together researchers researching a wide range of contexts around the world, including Poland, Syria, Viet Nam, Pakistan, China and many more. Though not with a specific EMI focus, some key talks for me included the following:
- Gabriela Meier (University of Exeter) highlighted the vital role non-English languages play in advancing global scholarship.
- Jonathan Donnellan examined the linguistic landscape at Sojo University in Japan, questioning conventional definitions of a “native speaker” and exploring how different languages interact across campus.
- Phuong Anh Kieu, an MA student at the University of Exeter, presented a case study on teacher perceptions and professional development needs for CLIL implementation in an ESL school.
- Monlouie M. Sorzano examined pedagogical translanguaging to support struggling readers in multilingual classrooms in the Philippines.
- Agnieszka Grochola offered an overview of minority modern foreign language teaching through blended learning in secondary schools in Ireland.
- Philip Montgomery of Nezarbayev University presented a paper on the stress observations can cause teachers, an area we address in one of our Hot Topics workshops.
- Ulzhan Urazaliyeva (SDU) presented her PhD work on the possibilities and challenges of integrating Virtual Reality in English language teaching.
Congratulations
Both the online and face-to-face events were incredibly successful, and I’d like to congratulate ELIPro and their hosts SDU and KIMEP on behalf of Oxford EMI for organising an excellent conference. Almaty was the perfect city to host the in-person event, and the weather (and the local food) was excellent! Here’s looking forward to the 5th annual ELIPro conference in 2027!
Blog writer
Simon Dunton is a senior trainer and consultant at Oxford EMI. You can find out more about him on the Meet our team page.