IASCL 2011 will take place in Montreal
We are very pleased to announce that the venue for the IASCL meeting in 2011 will be Montreal, Canada. The planned location will be at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), located in the city’s urban core and the tentative dates are from Monday, July 18th to Sunday, July 24th, 2011. The downtown location allows for an easy access to the conference via public transportation and the dates were chosen according to the long tradition of IASCL conference holding in mid-July. In addition, at this time of the year, Montreal is home to a number of vibrant festivals (Just for Laughs comedy festival, International Fireworks competition, Nights of Africa music festival, to name a few), all of which can be explored by the conference participants.
Why Montreal for 2011?
Montreal is an attractive venue for the IASCL meeting in 2011. There are four universities (UQAM, McGill, Concordia and Université de Montréal) in this Canadian city, all with vibrant research in child language cutting across the disciplines of cognitive science. Researchers from several university departments are interested in various aspects of child language and have strong links to other research centers in the city and abroad. The Cognitive Science Institute, the Center for Research on Language, Mind and Brain-CRLMB and the Center for the Study of Learning and Performance (linking all four universities) are well-known research centers focusing on language and cognitive science.
Over the past years, there have been sixteen international annual conferences held at UQAM (1990-2005): TENNET (Theoretical and Experimental Neuropsychology) with a strong linguistic component. In addition, there are several national and international conferences in all areas of cognitive science held each year in Montreal.
This year, Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics is hosting their annual conference in Montreal, ACFAS conference (Association francophone pour le savoir), with an important linguistic section was hosted at McGill University in 2006 and at UQAM in 2004, and Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2) Conference is to take place at McGill University as well. In addition, the 2003 Summer School on Categorization in Cognitive Science was held at UQAM. All Montreal universities are quite familiar with and expert at hosting quite successful international conferences.
Montreal is a most pleasant town at this time of the year. It is also one of the least expensive places in North America. The city has a rich cultural heritage with French, English and other ethnic roots, making it one of the most popular destinations in North America.
Organizing Committee (partial list)
Henri Cohen, Ph.D. (Concordia, 1981).
Professor, Department of Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience Center;
UQAM. Editor, Journal of Neurolinguistics; Associate
Editor, Brain and Cognition; Section editor (clinical
linguistics and phonetics) Compass.
Organization of 12 international meetings in the past ten years; special
journal issues; books; numerous journal articles; funded research.
From UQAM: Henri Cohen, Claire Lefebvre, Lucie Ménard, Rushen Shi. In addition, the Cognitive Science Institute at UQAM will be a sponsor of the event.
From UK (Birbeck College): Mayada Elsabbagh.
From McGill: Shari Baum.
From Université Descartes (Paris V): Maya Hickmann, Monique Plaza.
In addition, colleagues in Israel, US and Canada (University of Toronto, University of British Columbia) have been contacted to help assist with aspects of the conference. Other colleagues in the UK and Europe are being contacted as well.
More information about general and specific themes, proposed and invited symposia, invited speakers, instructions for poster submissions and about the conference venue will be posted.