Education | UM to hold second edition of language conference

UM Hengqin campus

The University of Macau’s (UM) Department of Portuguese will hold the Second Conference on Language Contact in Asia and the Pacific on Wednesday and Thursday this week.
The conference aims to provide a platform for experts and scholars to exchange knowledge from multidisciplinary research on the different facets of language contact and multilingualism in Asia and the Pacific region.
According to a statement from the UM, papers in the fields of descriptive linguistics, linguistic anthropology, and other language-
related areas will be presented at the conference.
The conference will include case studies on language communication primarily between the countries and territories of Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. It will also examine the state of several endangered minority languages, with a focus on Malaysia, Singapore and Macau.
Conducted in English, the event will welcome several keynote speakers including Professor Peter Austin from the SOAS University of London, Professor Lisa Lim from the University of Hong Kong and Professor Stefanie Pillai from the University of Malaya.
Meanwhile, UM has shot up in the QS World University Ranking to 545th place among the world’s best 900 universities. The new standing corresponds to a jump of 123 positions over that of last year.
In the two previous annual rankings, UM sat at a position beyond the 651st place.
The ranking includes some 56 universities from mainland China and 15 tertiary education institutions from Taiwan, each of which managed a position in the top 900. Hong Kong in turn has seven schools among the top 610. Staff reporters