Birkner elected President of the Society for Applied Linguistics
Prof Dr Karin Birkner, holder of the Chair of German Linguistics at the University of Bayreuth, has been elected Chair of one of the largest specialist societies in her field for a two-year term of office.
Since 1 January 2024, Prof. Karin Birkner, holder of the Chair of German Linguistics at the University of Bayreuth, has been President of GAL e.V., one of the largest and oldest linguistic societies in the German-speaking world with over 800 members.
The UBT has been represented on the board of the Gesellschaft für Angewandte Linguistik (GAL e.V.) by Prof Markus Bieswanger as President and Prof Karin Birkner as Vice President since 2017: Prof Bieswanger is now increasing his involvement in the umbrella organisation for applied linguistics (AILA e.V.) and Prof Birkner is taking over the presidency for the next two-year term of office.
Prof Birkner will continue to be responsible on the board for the promotion of young researchers and the research focus "Flight and Migration", among other things. The society's office will remain in Bayreuth; all of GAL's communication will originate from here, making the UBT and the relevant research areas represented here a highly visible centre of applied linguistics in Europe.