Chair’s Welcome
The (SCOPUS/ISI) GLOCAL COMELA, The Annual Conference on Mediterranean and European Linguistic Anthropology, akin to its global siblings (The CALA, The MEALA, The SCAALA, The AFALA, The COOLA, The NAALA), has long sought to reinvigorate the fundamental roots and principles of Linguistic Anthropology, and to re-localize the field, thus marrying the focus on Mediterranean and European regions and work by Global academics.
The (SCOPUS/ISI) GLOCAL COMELA 2021, at The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, July 21-24, 2021, arrives as a highly symbolic juncture in Mediterranean and European cum Global Linguistic Anthropology. The GLOCAL COMELA 2021, themed Bounded Languages … Unbounded, exposes the current Linguistic and Anthropological climate in Europe and the Mediterranean. Borders are constantly contested, and ethnicity and nation alike shift yet re legitimize communities and heritages, thus reigniting a dedicated scholarship and praxis in the fields of Linguistic Cultural Anthropology, Sociolinguistics, and Language and Society.
The theme for the GLOCAL COMELA 2021 is highly pertinent to the current state of all Mediterranean and European regions vis-a-vis their global analogues.
Impervious boundaries throughout Europe and the Mediterranean are now as pervasive as at any time throughout history, not least through a migration effected by political and economic instability. Here, the Mediterranean and Europe have historically motivated the renegotiation of languages, where junctures form between shifting language, society, notions of heritage, and ethnolinguistic subjectivities. The term ‘bounded’ describes the spatiotemporal articulations yet alignments of populations throughout global time and space, that is, the ways in which language and ethnicity legitimize themselves so to reaffirm communities of ethnolinguistic practice as they migrate and return to their heritage locations. The term ‘unbounded’ signifies efforts by these ethnicities to renegotiate transnational privileges, through developing both heritage and global capital, an effort central to neoliberal intentions.
The (SCOPUS/ISI) GLOCAL COMELA 2021 will build and extend global networks of Mediterranean and European Linguistic Anthropology, collating work within Linguistics, Anthropology, Sociolinguistics, Sociology, Cultural studies, and Linguistic Anthropology, all pertinent to the Mediterranean and Europe, but throughout worldwide arenas. Through the Conference, global academics will juxtapose knowledge, expertise, and valuable Linguistic and Anthropological data, creating greater interpersonal and inter-institutional networks constructed by the GLOCAL COMELA. To ground these efforts, the GLOCAL, at SOAS, University of London, is collaborating with The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens for the GLOCAL COMELA 2021 in Athens, together with Greece’s strongest Universities, The University of The Aegean, The University of Patras, The Democritus University of Thrace, and The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, networks an ever-growing number of institutions globally, thus adding to the current 350 universities around the world.
With over 300 Academics prominent in the field on its Scientific Committee, over 350 institutions globally as affiliates, with major official partners Taylor and Francis Global Publishers, and a global network of partners in Linguistic Anthropology, The (SCOPUS/ISI) GLOCAL COMELA 2021, at The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, in Athens, as a fully non-profit Conference on Linguistic Anthropology, will bring to life the original yet progressive intentions of Linguistic Anthropology, in and for the Mediterranean and Europe.
We thus welcome you to The GLOCAL COMELA 2021, The (Annual) Conference on Mediterranean and European Linguistic Anthropology in Athens, Greece, July 21-24, 2021, and to The GLOCAL COMELA as a whole.
Achilleas G. Chaldaeakes
Chair
The Conference on Mediterranean and European Linguistic Anthropology 2021, The COMELA 2021
School of Philosophy
The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
