Conversations on Language Policy in Africa: webinar 3 October 2025.
Dear members of our informal Circle,
As announced, the first webinar in our new series will take place Friday, 3 October, at 4 pm CEST. The format will be a short talk, followed by the opportunity for dialogue – approximately one hour in total.
The webinar will be hosted by Initiative Afrique of the University of Bern (Switzerland) and will use MS Teams. Prior registration is required.
Moderator this time will be Dr Djouroukoro Diallo of the University of Bern. Our first speaker is Caroline Story of Texas State University. She will speak on Postcolonial Language Imperialism in Africa – The Latter-day Saints Missionary Program.
In exploring the neocolonial reverberations of mission language planning, this webinar will examine the connection between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ (LDS Church) missionary program and postcolonial African language policies. The implications of conducting mission operations in Africa from an Anglocentric perspective are considered in relation to postcolonial discourses on power and exclusion in multilingual ecologies.
Caroline Story graduated with her bachelor's degree in anthropology summa cum laude from Texas State University before pursuing a master's degree in linguistics at Universität zu Köln with a focus on African linguistics. She is currently a doctoral researcher at Texas State's Innovative Anthropologies Lab studying ideologies of English in postcolonial Nigeria.
More information about the Circle’s webinar series is at https://afrilang.wixsite.com/afrilang/webinars
Best regards,
Bert van Pinxteren