Linguistic and Intercultural Research

Organized by the Institute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philology, Vilnius University 

Date: 6 May 2025

We are delighted to invite you to the 1ˢᵗ Student Conference on Linguistic and Intercultural Research, which will take place on-site on 6 May 2025 at the Institute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philology, Vilnius University. This event aims to bring together students to exchange insights and research findings on topics related to linguistics and intercultural communication.

Join us for a face-to-face gathering where we can connect, share ideas, and collaborate in person!

The Conference Programme is available here.

You can find the Book of Abstracts here.

Plenary Talk: Mosaic vs Melting Pot: Canada’s Intercultural History

Agnes Frances Pust, Deputy Head of Mission and Counsellor, Embassy of Canada to Lithuania

Agnes Pust serves in the Canadian Foreign Service with previous postings to Germany, Hungary (cross-accreditation to Slovenia), and Barbados (cross-accredited to Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia, St Vincent & The Grenadines). Since 2023, she is based at the Embassy of Canada in Lithuania as Counsellor (Political). At headquarters, responsibilities have included work in International Security and Defence Relations, the Afghanistan Task Force, Cybercrime, and Eastern Europe and Eurasia with a focus on Russia.

Plenary Talk: Facts vs Clicks: Navigating the Modern Media Minefield

Mindaugas Jackevičius, Editor-in-Chief of the LRT.lt News Website

Mindaugas Jackevičius has been serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the LRT.lt news website for six years. He manages a team of 60 people. LRT.lt produces news in Lithuanian, English, Polish, Ukrainian and Russian. He also hosts one of the most popular LRT TV programmes – 'Topic of the Day’. 

A few years ago, Mindaugas was a member of the EBU Public Service Media Future Leaders group. Before joining LRT, he worked as a journalist at DELFI, Lithuania's most popular news website, where he wrote about education, politics, and human rights.

During his career, Mindaugas has received numerous journalistic awards. He is a graduate of the Institute of Journalism of Vilnius University.

 

Plenary Talk: Affective performance of the self in YouTube reaction videos

Jan Chovanec, Masaryk University, Brno ()

In the diverse forms of mediatized communication, one of the key challenges for content producers lies in connecting with their audiences. Traditionally, speakers in split contexts have relied on synthetic personalization (Fairclough 2001) in order to establish a seemingly friendly and personal relation with the recipients. The new forms and genres of technology-mediated and digital communication provide new contexts in which such discursive work can be studied. The presentation looks at how YouTube online creators communicate with their audiences in reaction videos on YouTube. The talk documents some of the typical genre characteristics of YouTube videos and shows how online content producers employ affective resources in order to boost their authenticity (Chovanec 2024). I argue that Such behaviour is crucial within the context of the ‘attention economy’ (Abidin 2021) that currently permeates much digital content and that ultimately serves the purpose of monetising the influencers’ digital existence.

Jan Chovanec in Professor of English linguistics at Masaryk University in Brno, the Czech Republic, specializing in discourse analysis and socio-pragmatics. He has done research on various forms of spoken, written and digital mediated discourse. His work has focused on the language of live sports commentary, the discursive processes of othering, particularly in relation to the presentation of ethnic minorities in online reader comments, and, more recently, on interactional humour in diverse media contexts. He is the author of Pragmatics of Tense and Time in News (2014), The Discourse of Online Sportscasting (2018) and co-editor of a number of publications, including The Dynamics of Interactional Humour (2018, with Villy Tsakona), Analyzing Digital Discourses: Between Convergence and Controversy (2021, with Marjut Johansson and Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen) and Experiencing Digital Discourses (2025, with Camilla Vásquez). He is the co-editor-in-chief of Discourse, Context & Media and serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including Journal of Pragmatics; Internet Pragmatics and The European Journal of Humour Research.

1. Korostenskienė Julija (Chair)
2. Bikelienė Lina
3. Bikulčienė Jūratė
4. Chodzkienė Loreta
5. Inčiuraitė-Noreikienė Lina
6. Kriaučiūnienė Roma
7. Melnikienė Danguolė
8. Palovienė Birutė
9. Shipman-Gricienė Hannah

We are delighted to announce the 1ˢᵗ Student Conference, Linguistic and Intercultural Research, which will be held as an on-site event on 6 May 2025, at the Institute of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philology, Vilnius University. This event aims to bring together students to exchange insights and research findings on topics related to linguistics, education, and intercultural communication. Join us for a face-to-face event where we can connect, share ideas, and collaborate live! 

The conference will be conducted in English.

We invite undergraduate and graduate students to submit abstracts for 15-minute presentations, followed by a 5-minute discussion.

Submission Guidelines

• Abstract length: Up to 200 words
• Keywords: Provide 5 relevant keywords
• Abstracts must be submitted in either English or French.

Important Dates

• Abstract submission deadline: 15 March 2025
• Confirmation of participation: 31 March 2025
• Conference date: 6 May 2025

Accepted participants will receive a certificate confirming their participation, which could serve as a valuable addition to their CV.

Abstracts should be sent to . Please include your full name, academic affiliation, and the title of your presentation in your submission email.

We look forward to your contributions to this exciting academic exchange.