From the 24th to the 27th of September 2018, the 53rd Linguistics Colloquium will be held at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark. The theme of this year’s conference is “Linguistic Variation and Diversity”. The colloquium is open to any theoretical approaches.Abstracts for papers (20 minutes presentation plus 10 minutes discussion) or posters should be written in English or German and have a length of 300-500 words including references. The deadline for abstracts is the 12th of March 2018. The website for the colloquium can be found here.

Relevant topic areas of the conference include, but are not limited to:

• intra- and inter-linguistic variation
• cross-linguistic comparison – typological, contrastive, historical
• language contact
• multilingualism – individual, institutional, societal
• language policies and minority languages
• linguistic variation and diversity in the media
• linguistic variation and diversity in language teaching
• translation of linguistic variation

On September 17 and 18, 2018, an international conference on the topic of name geography will take place in the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz. The reason for this is that the German Family Name Atlas (DFA) was finished in July 2017 with the publication of the sixth volume. The aim of the project was to record the most common surnames in Germany in their spatial distribution on the basis of grammatical and lexical questions. Thus, the atlas could not only show the distinctive regional distribution of many family names, but it also proves to be a catalyst and model for further family name geographical and lexicographic projects in Germany and abroad. Examples are the “Digital Surname Dictionary of Germany”, the “Surname Atlas of Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Hesse”, the “Luxembourg Family Name Atlas” or the “Luxembourgish family name dictionary”. In addition, it turns out that the geographical evaluation also leads to new insights in other branches of onomastics, as investigations, for example, on call, settlement, guest house or street names show.

Possible topics are:
· Evaluations with material from the DFA, interpretation of DFA maps, including the inclusion of adjacent disciplines.
· Presentation of work in progress, completed or planned name geographical projects (family names and other name types) at home and abroad.
· Geographical studies in areas that have not been researched so far, such as business names.
· Lectures from neighboring disciplines such as dialectology, geography, digital humanities, computational linguistics, computer science, which contribute to the further development of the name geography (compulsory is graphic material).
· Methodical possibilities, technical solutions, visualization of name data.

The deadline for abstract submission is March 31, 2018. Abstracts can be sent by e-mail to namengeographie@adwmainz.de. More information can be found here.

From the 4^th to the 6^th of June 2018, researchers working within the area of post-colonial studies are encouraged to attend a special conference in Zurich, Switzerland.  The interdisciplinary conference, “Postcolonial Language Studies: Changes and Challenges”, will encompass the fields of anthropological linguistics, historical linguistics, language documentation, and sociolinguistics. Researchers who are interested in presenting a formal paper are encouraged to submit a 300-word abstract (excl. references) to iacpl@es.uzh.ch by January 28, 2018.

From the 17^th to the 19^th of May 2018, the city of Timisoara, Romania will be the host of an international conference on British and American Studies.  Among the topics of discussion at this scientific gathering are translation studies, British and Commonwealth Literature, Cultural Studies, and American Studies.  Researchers who are interested in presenting their scholarship are encouraged to submit a 60-word abstract by the 15^th of February 2018.  More information on the submission process and the conference can be found via the conference website. The Call for Papers can be found here.

The 4^th Workshop of the Linguistic Colloquium: Language, Region, Identity (LRI 4) will be held from the 7^th to the 8^th of June 2018 in Merano, Italy.  The purpose of this colloquium is to foster scientific exchanges within the Alpine region of Italy, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.  The specific areas of linguistic research to be covered in the workshop include Applied Linguistics, Language Documentation, and Sociolinguistics. The theme of the workshop is “Language Policy – Language Use – Language Standard”.  New researchers (PhD students and post-docs) are especially encouraged to submit an abstract for possible presentation.  The deadline for submission is February 15, 2018.  You can find the official Call for Papers here, and more information at the LRI website.

In New Orleans, Louisiana (USA), the 7th Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics (SEM2018) will be held from the 5th to the 6th of June 2018, co-located with NAACL 2018. The purpose of this conference is to bring together researchers working in the fields of semantics of natural languages and its computational modeling. The conference embraces symbolic and probabilistic approaches. The Call for Papers can be found here. Paper submission are due March 2, 2018.

From the 7th to the 8th of June 2018, the international conference, “Terminology and Ontology: Theories and Applications” (TOTh2018) will take place in Chambéry, France at the University Savoie Mont-Blanc. The purpose of TOTh is to bring together researchers and practitioners who work on terminology, language, and knowledge engineering. The annual events that TOTh organizes include a conference, a training session, and a Workshop. Under the patronage of an international scientific committee, the TOTh Conferences cover an extensive field of studies and research concerning terminology and/or ontology. The conference languages are French and English; and the deadline for abstracts is January 26, 2018. Interested in learning more? Details about the conference can be found at the website, and the call for papers can be downloaded here.

From the 29th to the 30th of November 2018, a conference devoted to the subject of “Names in Writing” will take place in Gothenburg, Sweden. It will give scholars a chance to reflect on the significance of writing in the study of names and provide a platform to discuss approaches from different fields. Among the many themes to be addressed at this event are the graphemes of names; names an orthography; written names in language contact; written names in the public sphere. The deadline for 300 word (excluding references) abstract submissions is February 20, 2018. 

The conference is arranged by the Department of Languages and Literatures, Gothenburg University, and Institute for Language and Folklore, Gothenburg. Venue: Olof Wijksgatan 6, Gothenburg (“Gamla hovrätten”).

The call for papers can be found here.