24 years ago
In 2001, from July 5th to 7th, the XI Luso-Hispano Conference was held in Castellón. Over the years, this event became the seed that led to the creation of AELFE and its inaugural conference, held in Madrid in 2002. At that time, the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) was celebrating its 10th anniversary as a university and was in the midst of constructing its current campus. It was in this context that three lecturers from the Department of English and Romance Philology, passionate advocates and promoters of Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP), organised the XI Luso-Hispano Conference. They were Inma Fortanet, Juan Carlos Palmer, and Santiago Posteguillo. The UJI owes a great deal to these lecturers for the significant push they have given to LSP over the past 24 years, contributing to the development and advancement of the field through their current research interests.
The photograph shows these three colleagues together with the distinguished guests at the Conference at that time: Enrique Alcaraz (RIP), Vijay Bhatia, and Françoise Salager-Meyer. These guests have been highly influential figures in the field, and their legacy remains significant to this day.
Over the last two decades, the field of LSP has undergone profound evolution. With the advent of artificial intelligence, the boundaries of this discipline continue to expand. This dynamic progression, along with other factors, has inspired us to focus the 23rd AELFE conference on the topic: “Revisiting LSP in the Multimodal Literacy Age.” We hope that, just as it did 24 years ago, this event will serve as a dynamic and productive meeting point from which new collaborations, proposals, and research lines will emerge to continue supporting and fostering LSP.