Opening the conference with the first plenary address, Professor Hilde Sollid presented “Both sides now – on affect in Sámi language education policy in Norway”. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork engagement in Northern Norway, Sollid theoretically anchored her analysis of the experiences of two students of Sámi in Ahmed’s (2004, 2014) notion of affect and Lomawaima and McCarty’s (2006) safety zone. More specifically, Sollid demonstrated that despite having different educational trajectories regarding Sámi, students share a desire to learn Sámi language. Importantly, data presented by Sollid showed that affect is multidimensional, as learning Sámi is filled with joy but also with sadness and melancholy. This is found in how affect circulates and sticks between the students of Sámi and artefacts and spaces they link to Sámi language and culture.

On the second day of the conference, member of MultiTrans’ scientific network Professor Sari Pietikäinen (University of Jyväskylä) gave the plenary address entitled “From Frost to Flow: What a river can tell us about language ideologies and inequalities?”. Taking the Arctic Torniojoki River as a focal point, Pietikäinen examined language ideological contestation and innovation. Situated at the rhizome of historical and present languages, including Sámi, Meänkieli, Finnish, Swedish, and English, Torniojoki also connects traditional and contemporary ways of making a living, including reindeer herding, salmon fishing, mining, and tourism. Using this context as a point of departure, Pietikäinen explored how assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 1980/1987, Pietikäinen 2021) helps in expanding our focus from essences and layers to connections and lines and moving beyond binaries towards critical interactions and flows between material, discursive, and affective.

Postdoctoral Fellow Rafael Lomeu Gomes presented a talk entitled “Linguistic repertoire in transitions: multilingualism in upper secondary education in Northern Norway”. Lomeu Gomes argued that the home-school intersection is a relevant locus of investigation to better understand the ways in which the linguistic repertoires of students with transnational background develop overtime. Focusing specifically on the case of a student from East Africa and his family, Lomeu Gomes showed how the family conceives of a WhatsApp group as a safe space created for the family members to help each other in their Norwegian language learning. Engaging with southern epistemologies to make sense of the family’s language learning experiences outside of formal educational settings, Lomeu Gomes argued, may represent an important step towards the creation of alternative ways of responding to formal language offerings that privilege homogeneity over heterogeneity and assimilation over diversity.

Prior to the conference, Hilde Sollid and Sari Pietikäinen participated in an advisory board meeting in the project "Dialects as cultural heritage in Kalaallit Nunaat" (more details about the project can be found here).