EATAW 2021 : 11th Conference of the European Association for the Teaching of the Academic Writing : book of abstracts

Abstract

Two years have gone by, and it is time for us to meet again. Because the EATAW conference alternates with the conference of the European Writing Centers Association (EWCA), our plan had been to build on EWCA’s theme of “empowerment” in writing centers planned for the meeting in Graz in 2020. However, the covid-19 pandemic hit and EWCA could not take place. A year later, it was far from clear whether EATAW could take place, or in which form. We debated this a great deal, asked you all in a survey and then decided to go online, crossing our fingers that enough people would register. And here we are, ready to see you virtually on July 7 and 8, 2021 and still connect to EWCA intentions with our theme “The residence of writing and writing support.” If you are wondering about the connection of this theme to empowerment, we were thinking that the various forms and approaches in writing support and writing centers depend on where the support comes from and who provides it. Even though EWCA caters to writing center practitioners and EATAW to teachers, we all deserve to pause and revisit the foundations. More specifically, we should ask seemingly simple questions, some of which have been here for decades but may still be unanswered in certain contexts and/or in contexts that keep changing, such as the following: Who are we? • Who are we as teachers of academic writing? • What do we need to know directly to support academic writers at any level? • What else do we need to know to teach academic writers so that they can prosper? Where do we work? • Where DOES, SHOULD, and COULD writing support reside? • What are the different models universities have to support writing? • How is writing support defined? What is our field? • (How) has academic writing become a field? • How do we know? • How has teaching of writing made a difference in your contexts? How do technologies help us? • How digital are we? • How are we affected by the impact of technologies? • What has the pandemic taught us about the technologies? Who are other stakeholders in academic writing support? • How do libraries approach/support academic writing? • What is the role of journal editors, publishers, and reviewers? • Who have we lost, and what new partnerships have we made? Moreover, our theme explores the essence of our work and professional identity in an unprecedented time of the covid-19 outbreak that has put more things in motion than we could have ever imagined. Therefore, we added the question of: What has changed recently? • How has the residence of writing support changed as we have shifted to working remotely? • What have the quarantines taught us about the particular nature of proximity? • What have we lost/gained? We very much appreciate the wide interest of the EATAW community in the topics. We invite you to view this time as an opportunity for self-reflection and exploration of new things, and we are excited to see so many fascinating responses to the theme. Welcome to EATAW Conference 2021 and enjoy.