Let’s found an association! This idea came to mind to the founding members of the Diversity in Linguistics Association in autumn 2021. But what led to this idea?

In the beginning, there was the student council for linguistics and phonetics at the University of Cologne. At the turn of the year 2017/2018, Natascha, who is now on the advisory board of the association, came up with the idea of organising an international summer school on forensic linguistics. A big undertaking for a small student council, but Natascha and Dominic, who is now president of the association, take on the task. In summer 2018, the Summer School takes place for the first time; then in summer 2019 for the second time. In the meantime, Janina, now vice president, has also joined the group. The summer school takes place for the third time in the summer of 2021. Shortly afterwards, Dominic, Janina and Natascha decide to found an association.

An association just for a summer school? Is that even worth the effort? Fortunately, we don’t have to answer this question. At the time of the founding, the association not only included the summer school, but also a workshop on statistics in linguistics. Where did that come from? Originally, the workshop started as a tutorial for applied statistics offered by the linguistics and phonetics student council at the University of Cologne. After a few such courses, a summer school workshop followed, and most recently two online workshops for national and international participants. Dominic and Janina have been running the workshop together since the beginning.

But that is not all. In addition to the summer school and statistics workshops, a newly started talk series is also part of the newly founded association. In the talk series “Diversity in Linguistics”, the association pursues its general goal: To provide a place for diversity in linguistics. With this new event, the association will start into the future; hopefully with you as a member!