Registration deadlines

Early bird tickets available to purchase until Friday 18th September 2026. All other tickets available until close of Sunday 8th November 2026 (in person) and Friday, 13th November 2026 (online).

Page Menu

• • Programme
  • Plenary sessions
  • In-person presentations
  • Online presentations
  • Sponsors and Exhibitors
  • Keynote videos and speakers handout

Download the full progamme NALDIC Conference 34 Programme

Download here the full programme:

• NALDIC Conference 34 Programme

All keynote speaker sessions will be streamed live to the online conference participants.

Sabine Little | University of Sheffield

Sabine Little is Professor of Literacy and Multilingualism at the University of Sheffield, and Vice President of the UK Literacy Association. For the past 20 years, her work has focused on understanding how children who grow up with multiple languages navigate their lives. With the child at the centre of her work, Sabine (often working with children as co-researchers) explores multilingualism in the home, at school, and in other spaces, including library and prison contexts. Her current project, the Quilt of Welcome (www.quiltofwelcome.org) focuses on creating space for multilingualism and belonging. With a background in art and performance, she also works as a multilingual storyteller, developing storytelling techniques that rely on the languages in the room, making them accessible to all teachers and practitioners.

Vally Lytra | Goldsmiths, University of London & Thomas Quehl

Vally Lytra is Reader in Languages in Education and Co-Director of the Teachers’ Centre at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research, practice and grass-roots community activism centre on the intersections of multilingualism, language education and society in migration and minority contexts, with a focus on creating linguistically and culturally just learning environments for all. She has published extensively on community and minority languages education, inclusive language pedagogies, faith literacies, and language and migration, drawing on (auto)ethnographic and collaborative research methodologies. Her latest project with Thomas Quehl, Creating Space for Multilingualism in Superdiverse Schools, supports the development of multilingual pedagogies in mainstream schools and led to the creation of the open-access Toolkit for Implementing Multilingual Pedagogies in Primary Schools in England. Vally co-leads the Special Interest Group D.EL.EXO, an international forum on the teaching of Greek worldwide, and is co-series editor of the Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism series.

Ayo Mansaray | King’s College London

Dr Ayo Mansaray is a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of Education and Policy at King’s College London, School of Education, Communication and Society. His research focuses on educational inequalities of race, gender and social class in schools and universities. He has particular interests in multilingual learners, the experiences of, and outcomes for, minority ethnic students, and young people’s educational trajectories and aspirations. He has led and contributed to research projects for funders including the Department for Education, Ofsted, and a range of charitable foundations. He is currently leading a collaboration with the Portal Trust to develop a research-informed teacher toolkit for mixed-heritage racial literacy in secondary schools, co-produced with London teachers.

All plenary sessions will be streamed live to the online conference participants.

Visible yet unseen: Heritage language, mixed-heritage young people and the paradox of recognition in schools

Ayo Mansaray | King’s College London

Mixed-heritage young people are among the fastest growing demographic groups in London’s schools, yet their experiences remain largely invisible in educational research, policy and professional practice. This paradox of recognition sits at the heart of this presentation. Language is often pictured as a boundary between two  environments, home and school, which the student crosses or negotiates. Mixed-heritage households, however, complicate that picture from the inside. Where two or more heritages meet, their languages are rarely inherited equally, so that a young person is positioned differently in relation to each parent, with English often serving as the household’s own common language rather than the school’s alone. Being both mixed and multilingual therefore complicates each condition. Mixedness mediates multilingualism, and language becomes a medium through which mixed identities are claimed, tested and contested.

The “Reading for Pleasure Crisis” and multilingual learners: a story of hope in a changing world?

Sabine Little | University of Sheffield

Amidst a declared “Reading for Pleasure crisis” and in the National Year of Reading, research by the National Literacy Trust is showing that multilingual learners read more, a more diverse range of resources, and treat reading as more of a social experience than children who grow up speaking just one language. In this talk, I will begin by looking at the data, before considering how we may use asset-based, principled practices to embed multilingual reading and stories in our classrooms, creating spaces that are linguistically inclusive and benefitting all learners. 

Implementing multilingual pedagogies in mainstream classrooms: tensions, openings, futures

Vally Lytra | Goldsmiths, University of London
and Thomas Quehl

Multilingual pedagogies are increasingly recognised as valuable for children’s learning, identity and wellbeing worldwide. Yet, mainstream primary school pedagogy and teacher education are often still shaped by a persistent monolingual norm. Drawing on our collaborative work with a primary school in South London that included the development of a toolkit for multilingual pedagogies, we explore how these approaches might be integrated in everyday classroom practice. We examine the tensions teachers navigate alongside the openings that emerge when teachers, children and researchers work in dialogue. Thus, multilingual pedagogies can be envisioned as a teaching and learning resource, in which learners’ confidence and wellbeing, curricular learning and teachers’ growing understanding of children’s multilingualism are understood as an inseparable whole. We conclude reflecting on what sustainable whole-school approaches to multilingual pedagogies could look like and what futures for language education in more inclusive classrooms they might open up.

Platinum Sponsor & Exhibitor: BEBC

Gold Sponsor & Exhibitor: Learning Village

Across Cultures offers a world-renowned service that partners with teachers to share the knowledge, skills and resources needed to successfully support their language learners with EAL, low-level literacy and SEND needs within the demands of an evolving world.

Services include:

• Learning Village, a blended EAL vocabulary, language structure and reading programme for new to English and low-level literacy learners from 6-11 and 12-16 years old.
• Community Village, which offers English learning for school community engagement. Designed for multilingual families of EAL learners.
• AssessEP, an English Proficiency tool to understand a learner’s current English proficiency performance and provide ongoing feedback on progress.
• EAL Framework Process, which aims to provide teachers with the skills and resources needed to successfully support language learners within the demands of the curriculum and of a multilingual world.
• A complimentary EAL professional development service
• Consultancy

Silver Sponsors & Exhibitors: Password Admissions Tests and The Spanish Embassy Education Office

Developed by world-leading experts in English language assessment at CRELLA, Password tests are used by schools in the UK and internationally to assess multilingual learners’ ability to access English-medium education.

Research from Oxford University shows that English proficiency is a key predictor of attainment and educational outcomes for pupils with EAL.  Password’s Pupil English tests assess language proficiency in both social and academic school contexts and are aligned to the CEFR, an internationally recognised framework that values plurilingualism.

Results provide valuable context for interpreting other school assessment data, establishing English language proficiency baselines, planning support, and tracking progress.  Schools benefit from a user-friendly platform delivering accurate, reliable, secure online testing and fast results under their own branding.

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The Spanish Embassy Education Office promotes educational cooperation between Spain and the United Kingdom, supporting multilingualism, international partnerships and language education. We work with schools, universities and educational organisations to strengthen collaboration and share good practice in multilingual learning.

Our programmes support teachers, schools and multilingual learners, including children from Spanish-speaking backgrounds. Through initiatives such as ALCE (Spanish Language and Culture Programme), we help young people maintain and develop their linguistic and cultural heritage alongside their mainstream education.

We are delighted to support NALDIC34 and look forward to engaging with educators, researchers and school leaders committed to inclusion, multilingualism and high-quality educational opportunities for all learners.