Updates from Your Yogad Scholar

Earlier this month, I had the chance to join my first ever international conference, the Approaches to Migration, Identity, and Language (AMLI) 2021 hosted by the University of Sussex. It was an incredible opportunity to not only get to know some of the recent work being done on the subject, but also to connect with brilliant scholars and researchers in the field.

The plenary presented on the last day by Dr. Ana Deumert (titled "What if there had never been settlers?") really spoke to me, when she said, "The past is a future priority - The past was once a present, the present will become another past, and the future will become another present." Ana approaches coloniality as a disruptive force that affects us all and must be deconstructed. In the future, I hope to read more work on pre-colonial Philippines and hopefully even write some papers on it. Before we head into the future, we must first know who we were as a people before colonial forces shaped our identities, and ways of living and thinking.

To make scholarship more accessible, all the presentations for AMLI 2021 have been made public here: amli2021.org/panels/language-ideology-and-migration/

My work is the first one on Language Ideology in the link above (more amazing work below mine as well, including Carleton University's Rachelle Vessey's research on multilingual nannies), but if you click on "Panels" you'll see the research done on other topics. There are also several papers done on the Philippines, which I was very pleased about. The discussions were also a great way of getting and giving feedback on each other's work.

My paper for AMLI 2021 discusses the results of a workshop I did with several Filipino-Canadians who attended the Pinoys on Parliament's 2021 National Youth Leadership Conference (see workshop description here: pinoysonparliament.com/the-language-baggage-unpacking-language-ideologies-among-young-filipino-canadians/) where we talked about their language experiences and ideas about the languages they carry as multilingual migrants. A huge thank you to all the participants, Dr. Sid Sudiacal for helping facilitate the group discussions, POP21 leaders and organizers, as well as Philippine Centre Canada for sponsoring the event.

Finally, I am hoping to see Yogad on the podcasting world very soon - I was invited for an interview by the wonderful LeDonna (also a multilingual herself) of Discovering Language (see www.discoveringlanguage.com/). Her podcast, also called Discovering Language on Spotify, features lesser known languages. I hope to share the episode on Yogad with you all once it becomes available later in the year.

That's all for now, and thank you for your continuous support! Mabbalat!