The Ibero-American Association of Applied Linguists (AIALA, by its abbreviations in both Spanish and Portuguese) is a regional organization of AILA. Launched in 2020, AIALA exists to support and amplify Spanish, Portuguese, and affiliated minoritized and indigenous languages, both in supporting applied linguistics research foci, as well as the applied linguists who speak these languages worldwide.
Our presentation at the 2023 AILA World Congress in Lyon will spotlight ongoing efforts by the AIALA collaborative community, including but not limited to our creation of a membership and resource database, commitments to present at each World Congress and all national organization, as well as a social media presence. These ongoing efforts will be contextualized by our motivation to form this AILA regional organization based on shared languages, rather than geopolitical boundaries.
Finally, while officially endorsed by founding national organizations AAAL (North America), ALAB (Brazil), AMLA (Mexico), and AESLA (Spain), all members of AILA are invited to join and participate actively in AIALA. We will end the talk with a call to action for all colleagues to join us in our efforts to make AILA and our applied linguistics work to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and access. Specifically, we will challenge our audience to adopt at least one practice of AIALA in their own applied linguistics research, whether it be examining a reference section of their latest paper and intentionally making it more diverse and inclusive, translating an abstract into another language, or more ideas, we will have concrete, tangible suggestions that can be implemented immediately to impact positive change. We will also discuss our ongoing collaborations with the Multilingual Abstract and Open Applied Linguistics initiatives.
