Minority languages and media landscapes in Africa, Europe and, Latin America: Between global and regional dynamics

Claudia Soria is Researcher at the Institute for Computational Linguistics of the National Research Council, Italy. Her fields of expertise are Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing. She has been involved in several European projects. She has extensive experience in language resources in their entire life cycle, from creation to representation to evaluation. She is one of the authors of the META-NET White Paper ”The Italian Language in the Digital Age”. Her current research interests revolve around the use of Language Technology for protection and valorisation of linguistic diversity and to enable digital opportunities to all. She was coordinator of the Erasmus+ project “The Digital Language Diversity Project”, and she is currently actively involved in several initiatives concerned with the relationship between technology and minority languages. She is the author of 100+ publications in international outlets, is a member of the main associations in the field, and annually reviews for the major conferences and journals. She has co-chaired the CCURL Workshop series since the beginnings, she founded and co-chairs the Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages (SIGUL). She graduated and later obtained her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Pisa. She has been an invited speaker at a number of international conferences in relation to her work about digital language diversity and vitality.

Abiodun Salawu is Professor of Journalism, Communication and Media Studies and Director of the research entity, Indigenous Language Media in Africa (ILMA) at the North-West University, South Africa. He has taught and researched journalism for over two decades in Nigeria and South Africa. Prior to his academic career, he practised journalism in a number of print media organisations in Nigeria. He has to his credit, scores of scholarly publications in academic journals and books. He has also edited/co-edited eight books and authored one. He is a regular presenter of papers at local and international conferences. He is a co-vice chair of the journalism section of International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) and a member of editorial/advisory boards of a number of journals. He is involved in the founding of the International Association for Minority Language Media Research. He is rated by the NRF as an established researcher at the level of C1 (with international recognition) and he is a member of the Codesria’s College of Senior Academic Mentors.

Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed is Professor researcher at the School of Social Communication and Journalism, Universidad Externado de Colombia. He has worked in the field of Minority Lanuage Media in comparative studies between Latin America and Europe, he is co-editor of "Social Media and Minority Languages" (Multilingual Matters, 2013) one of the seminal books on the topic and a founding member of the International Association for Minority Language Media Research (IAMLMR).