StuTS 68 - All you need to know! (Newsletter 4)

Dear participants of the 68th StuTS, only 2 days until the start of the 68th StuTS! We can hardly wait! But before we get started on sharing all the cool details about the conference, please make sure that you’re aware of the exact time zone you’re in. The schedule for the conference is based on UTC+1. Moreover, please ensure that you’re running the latest version of your browser. You have received the link to our conference video platform via email. Please reach out if you cannot find the link!

A lot of you have probably already noted a couple of events you’re definitely going to attend. If not, it’s high time to do so! But don’t worry if you can’t attend all events - what counts for us is that you enjoy your time at the 68th StuTS! This includes taking breaks when needed and checking out the leisure programme. With the speakers ensuring that attendees with other backgrounds in linguistics can follow along too, every talk sparking your interest should be suitable for you. Make yourself at home at #StuTS68 and don’t hesitate to get involved with the talks!

But before the 68th StuTS kicks off, we’d like to ask you to create an account on the conference platform. You only need to enter your desired nickname and your password and you’re already done, no e-mail confirmation needed! Once you’re all set up, why not make yourself familiar with the conference platform (bildungs.cafe) and the chat system (BigBlueButton) at 17:00 (UTC+1) on Wednesday? If you’d like to see what the chat system looks like beforehand, you can get a first impression of it by checking out our written introduction. Following the introduction to bildungs.cafe and BigBlueButton, starting from 18:30 (UTC+1), you’ll have an opportunity to test your knowledge and hang out with your peers at the Linguistics Pub Quiz!

The regular programme will start with the Opening Session at 08:45 on Thursday, where we’ll introduce ourselves and welcome you to the conference. As of 09:00, the choice is yours! When the regular programme comes to its end on Saturday, we expressly invite you to attend the Closing Session, where you’ll have the opportunity to give us direct feedback and meet the organising team of the next StuTS! In addition, we will offer the students from Germany and neighbouring countries among you to host the 70th StuTS. But in the meantime, you can choose from 150 talks, attend keynote speeches by renowned university professors and meet students of linguistics from all over the world.

Looking at the programme, you may have noticed that every track has been named after a brilliant linguist:

Agathe Lasch [ʔaˈɡaːtə laʃ]

Ruqaiya Hasan [ɹʊˈkaɪə hʌˈsaːn]

Clotilde Tambroni [klɔˈtiːldə tʌmˈbroːnɪ]

Odille Morison [ʔɔˈdiːl ˈmoːɹɪsən]

Pāṇini [ˈpaːɳɪnɪ]

Wonder who they are? To cut a long story short, read up on them! It’s absolutely worth it!

At any time during your stay at the StuTS, we want you to feel comfortable. In order to achieve this, it is necessary for all speakers and attendees to have read and accepted our Code of Conduct. Should anyone violate it, please let the session chair or other team members in the Awareness Chat know, and we will dedicate ourselves to sorting out your issue. In addition, there will be a BIPoC chatroom to serve as a safe space if needed. Lastly, in the spirit of the fabled German punctuality, we ask you to generally join talks before they start.

When joining a talk, you will have the choice to either join the chatroom itself or to tune into its stream. You will see the same presentation no matter what you choose, but if you do research in a similar area or are enthusiastic about the topic (and may therefore end up wanting to ask questions), we strongly encourage you to join the room by clicking “Join Video Conference” to interact with the speaker. If you only want to lean back and listen, you can always just join the stream instead by clicking the play button on the video.

During the talks, the speakers are encouraged not to look at the chat unless the talk is meant to be interactive. Nevertheless, attendees in the room are free to ask understanding questions in the chat, which could be answered by other attendees. Your unanswered questions will be asked to the presenter by the session chair during the question segment of the talk. We know full well that the length of the discussion segment does not do justice to all the interesting questions you might have, so if there is no time for your question, send the speaker a private message including your question in the chat or ask them to answer your questions in our after-talk chatrooms. All four tracks for the regular programme will have such a room dedicated to discussions about the talks in them. Alternatively, you can use the feedback function, which you will find on the speaker’s profile page on the conference platform. The individual speakers’ profiles will be posted in the chat by the session chair at the beginning of each talk.

But it’s not all work and no play at this conference! We have created a leisure programme to help you to share ideas and connect with each other in a less formal setting. You can join any of our leisure activities over the lunch break or in the evening, activities such as the Berlin Bike Tour with live commentary, quizzes and debate platforms designed to challenge and expand your linguistic knowledge, and even an Open Mic on Friday evening! And if you ever need to catch a breather during the conference, check out our Leisure Lounge, open every afternoon! Speaking of the Open Mic, we are still looking for more submissions. If you have a cool skill or creative work you’d like to showcase, send us a quick note at stuts68@stuts.de with the words “Open Mic” in the title, and we’ll get back to you within the day.

This holds for all sorts of questions, so if you have any, feel free to send them our way. We’re here to help and will do our best to make the 68th StuTS as enjoyable as possible for you.

All the best,

StuTS 68 organising team