Deadline: 10 September
Language, Race, and (Un)Belonging in Higher Education
IMISCOE Annual Conference 2026, Girona, Spain, 29 June - 2 July 2026
Higher education has been undergoing profound restructuring on a global scale. Scholarship has highlighted key dynamics such as the marketisation of education under neoliberal agendas, the internationalisation of higher education, the growing mobility of students, and the enduring impact of colonial legacies on patterns of global student flows. Within this shifting landscape, the diversification of student populations has brought language to the forefront as a critical factor shaping institutional strategies, student mobility trajectories, and lived experiences.
Scholars have analysed how language influences students’ trajectories, affecting decision-making processes related to country and/or university choices, expectations of hospitality and linguistic and cultural integration, and the development of linguistic competencies. However, growing critical scholarship on the topic has investigated the intersection of language and race in shaping student experiences, shedding light not on language as inherently inclusive, but rather as potentially exclusionary, especially for racialised students.
This panel aims to investigate the interplay of language and race in higher education by examining how linguistic ideologies produce, sustain, or contest forms of racialised exclusion and (un)belonging. We invite contributions that address questions such as:
- How do linguistic ideologies within the higher education landscape contribute to the racialisation of students?
- In what ways do students navigate language as both a tool and a barrier in their experiences within internationalised/ globalised universities?
- How are notions of native speakerhood, monolithic national language forms, and academic language appropriateness entangled with racialised assumptions in higher education?
- What role does language play in shaping institutional inclusion policies, and how do these policies reinforce or challenge racial hierarchies in global academic spaces?
Please submit your 250-word abstract by September 10 to Tamila Carvalho (