The International Association of Multilingualism (IAM) is an academic, scientific professional association whose members undertake research in all areas of linguistics dealing with all facets of multilingualism. Research has focused on tri- and quadruple language acquisition by children, as well as on societal instances of multilingualism or on cases of individual multilingual repertoires, for example. IAM members work in various linguistic fields, including psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, language acquisition and applied linguistics.
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History
The IAM was founded in 2003 by Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen, and Ulrike Jessner during the conference at the Institute of Technology in Tralee, Ireland.
Presidents
Current board members are from universities in Germany, Israel, Ireland, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, UK and the US.
Activities
The members organize biannual conferences:
Although the dominant language of conference is English, all languages are welcome and papers are often held in other languages besides English, such as French, German or Spanish.
In 2010 a biannual Round Table Discussion on specific topics was founded by founding member Jean-Marc Dewaele at Birkbeck College in the United Kingdom, which was followed by a Round Table Discussion in 2012 in the United States at the MIT, organized by Suzanne Flynn, and 2013 at the University of Szczyrk in Poland, organized by Danuta Gabrys-Barker. The IAM held a Research Network meeting at the AILA conferences in Essen, Germany in 2008 and is a member of the Professional Network Forum with the European Center for Modern Languages in Graz. Since 2004 the IAM has had a publication venue, the International Journal of Multilingualism, originally edited by Jasone Cenoz, Spain, and Ulrike Jessner, Austria. The current editors are Danuta Gabrys-Barker, Poland, and Eva Vetter, Austria. After several years of two issues annually, it is now published four times annually. The language of publication is English. A newsletter is also distributed to association members approximately twice annually. A book series on multilingualism and multiple language learning and acquisition is linked to the IAM via the editorial board, which is identical to the board of the IAM. This series is edited by Britta Hufeisen and Beate Lindemann. All languages of publication are welcome.