Call for Papers: Academy of Aphasia 2021

Academy of Aphasia 59^th Annual Meeting 

October 24-26, 2021 

Virtual, US Eastern Daylight Time   

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: MAY 15^th, 2021 

The 59th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Aphasia will be held online. The Academy of Aphasia welcomes submissions of original experimental, clinical, theoretical, and historical research from any field that contributes to the study of aphasia, including Speech-Language Pathology, Psychology, Neurology, Neuroscience, Linguistics, History, and Computational Modeling.   

Our keynote speaker is Dr. Salikoko S. Mufwene (University of Chicago Dr. Mufwene is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. His research centers on the phylogenetic emergence of language, language contact in a globalized world, and in particular the emergence of Atlantic English creoles and Bantu contact language varieties. From this perspective, Dr. Mufwene will discuss how findings from neurolinguistics and aphasiology may inform evolutionary linguistics, and perhaps the other way around. Dr. Mufwene is the founding editor of the Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact book series and he was elected a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America in 2018. He has published over 250 journal articles and book chapters and his recent books include Language Evolution: Contact, competition and change (Continuum Press, 2008) and Complexity in language: Developmental and evolutionary perspectives (co-edited with Christophe Coupé & François Pellegrino. Cambridge University Press, 2017). He was a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in Lyon in 2010-2011. 

Now in its fourth year, the NIDCD-funded Academy of Aphasia conference grant (R13 DC017375-01) will sponsor student fellows to attend and present their work at the conference. They will also receive focused mentoring and training from seasoned faculty mentors at the meeting. Both U.S. and international students are eligible to apply – please contact Swathi Kiran (kirans@bu.edu) with inquiries. The grant also sponsors a state-of-the-art New Frontiers in Aphasia Research seminar.This year’s topic will focus on Electrocorticography (ECoG), and the speaker will be Dr. Edward Chang of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Chang is Chief of Epilepsy Surgery and Chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at UCSF. His scientific research focuses upon the brain mechanisms for human speech, movement, and cognition. He co-directs the Center for Neural Engineering & Prostheses at UC Berkeley and UCSF, which brings together engineering, neuroscience, neurology and neurosurgery to develop state-of-the-art biomedical devices to restore function for patients with neurological disabilities. 

Submission types and details 

Presentation types.  The annual meeting includes both platform and poster sessions. 

Platform sessions include: 

• Scientific papers—consisting of original research that has not yet been published. 
• Symposia—consisting of a number of papers focusing on a common theme from researchers representing different laboratories.  These papers may report on previously published research. 
• Mini-Workshops—methodologically oriented sessions consisting of a number of papers (possibly from the same research group) reporting a unique approach to a timely topic.

  Poster sessions include:  

• Scientific papers that can be presented primarily in a visual format.

  The Academy considers poster sessions to be as scientifically meritorious as platform sessions. Poster sessions will not conflict with platform sessions. 

  Guidelines for abstract content.  The submitted abstract should provide a concise statement of the problem or hypothesis, procedures and analyses conducted, results obtained, and final conclusion(s) drawn. Abstracts should conform to a provided template (in Word) and may include a maximum of 500 words (excluding references) as well as one camera-ready figure plus one table. 

  Symposia and Mini-Workshops.  In the case of symposia and mini-workshops, the organizer should submit an abstract summarizing the topic, including the names and affiliations of all the participants, and the titles of the other abstracts. In addition, an abstract should be submitted for each of the individual presentations. Abstracts for those individual presentations will need to indicate the symposium they are affiliated with as part of the submissions process, in the Acknowledgments. To help in the planning of the program, it is recommended that organizers of symposia and mini-workshops contact the chair of the Program Committee by e-mail (denouden@sc.edu) about their plans, and to receive feedback on organizational issues.  

  Authorship of submissions.  More than one abstract may be submitted by an individual, but an individual can be listed as first author on only one submission. Both members and non-members of the Academy are encouraged to submit proposals for scientific papers, symposia and mini-workshops. All submissions will be given equal consideration on the basis of their scientific merit and fitness for the Academy. 

  Conference participation.  The meeting is open to anyone interested in attending. However, Academy of Aphasia members, authors of accepted papers, and the first authors of rejected papers will have preference if (virtual) space limitations restrict the number of registrants. 

  Submission procedures.  Abstracts must be submitted through EasyChair, via the following link: 

  https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aoa2021 

  Student Awards.  This award is given to the student presenting the most scientifically meritorious paper (either platform or poster presentation). Submissions are judged by the Program Committee on the basis of the abstract submission and the conference presentation itself. All full-time graduate students are eligible for the student award, although priority is typically given to students focusing on research. Student applicants must: 

• be enrolled full time and be in good standing in a graduate program at the time of submission 
• be the first author and presenter of the paper submitted 
• not have received a student award from the Academy in the past

  Students wishing to be considered must indicate this during the submission process.  

  Selection criteria for the meeting program.  Abstracts will be reviewed by the Program Committee. Selection of papers will be based on scientific merit, innovation, appropriateness for the Academy of Aphasia, and on the representation of topics in the program.  

  Notification regarding acceptance: You will be notified by email of the decision by the Program Committee no later than July 15, 2021. 

  Program availability.  A PDF eBook with formatted abstracts will be distributed at the conference.  

  Program Committee: Dirk den Ouden (Chair), E. Susan Duncan (Vice Chair), Paola Marangolo, Erica Middleton, Bonnie Nozari, Gloria Olness, Adrià Rofes, and Tatiana Schnur 

Dear colleagues,