The cooperation between Departments of Applied Linguistics
The example of excellent international cooperation between the Department of Applied Linguistics of the Institute of German Studies of the University of Wrocław and the Department of Applied Linguistics of the Technical University in Dresden.
Partnership and strategic cooperation with foreign universities are important elements of research and activities of higher education institutions. They are usually small, but more long-lasting and intensive international friendships. Such as partnership between the Department of Applied Linguistics of the Institute of German Philology of the University of Wrocław andthe Department of Applied Linguistics of the Technical University in Dresden.
Prof. Joanna Szczęk is an university worker at the Institute of German Studies of the University of Wrocław and the head of the Department of Applied Linguistics of the Institute of German Philology of the University of Wrocław and she is the one who has built a foundation for this remarkable partnership. The Department of Applied Linguistics of the Institute of German Studies of the University of Wrocław has been looking for new foreign contacts. It became possible after the conclusion of the partnership contact between the Technical University in Dresden and the University of Wrocław as a part of Eastern Partnership DAAD. In 2016 prof. Joanna Szczęk wrote to her then a Dresden counterpart, prof. Joachim Scharloth and offered to organize together “Days of the Applied Linguistics” in order to get to know each other and to exchange scientific experience.
Linguists from Dresden came to Wrocław for the first time in 2016, April, in order to present their research and learn more about the current projects of their Polish colleagues. After a succesful conference inauguring cooperation (link) prof. Szczęk and prof. Scharloth decided to convert the conference into a regular series of scientific sessions, which will take place alternately in Dresden and in Wrocław. This way “Dresden days of the Corpus Linguistics”, which the Dresden Applied Linguistics under the direction of prof. Scharloth was organizing every year in summer semester, were combined with “Days of the Applied Linguistics”, and the regular programm was extented with participation of Polish researchers. Another “Days of the Applied Linguistics” took place in 2016, October and 2017, April. However, joint events are only the part of the partnership. Both students and university workers of both Departments have the opportunity to carry out stays in Wrocław and Dresden. Such stays in Dresden have been executed by university workers of the Department of Applied Linguistics: prof. dr hab. Joanna Szczęk, dr hab. Roman Opiłowski, prof. UWr, dr Przemysław Staniewski and doctorants (doktoranci) of the Department of Applied Linguistics of the Institute of German Philology of the University of Wrocław: mgr Aleksandra Kamińska and mgr Krystian Suchorab. The stay in Wrocław were executed by administration staff of the Dresden University as well.
When prof. Joachim Scharloth left the Technical University in Dresden in 2017, partnership was revived along with choosing prof. dr. Simon Meiera-Vieracker as a new profesor of the Department of Applied Linguistics of the Technical University in Dresden. In 2022, two more editions of “Days of the Applied Linguistics” took place, during which students of the Technical University of Dresden in the care of dr Regina Bergmann, university workers and doctorants of the Department of Applied Linguistics of the Institute of German Studies of the University of Wrocław, university workers of the Institute of German Studies of the University of Wrocław and invited foreign guests presented their own projects about analyses in the field of linguistic landscape and text linguistics. The 6th edition of the conference from the series of “Days of Applied Linguistics” is planned for 2023, June (link on the UWr site and link one the TU site).
Full text on the TU Dresden site
Text: Betty Baumann, tłumaczenie i redakcja: Joanna Szczęk
Translated by Natalia Idczak (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
