NASSLLI Call for Course and Workshop Proposals

WeSSLLI 2020 - see the main page for WeSSLLI course schedule
In an effort to limit the spread of COVID-19 and safeguard the health of potential attendees, we will not be hosting NASSLI in the summer of 2020. Instead, we will host the Web Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information, WeSSLLI. This will be a fully virtual school, with five classes and no parallel sessions. The Virtual Student Sessions and the the WeSSLLI Courses and Workshops will run July 11-17, and Virtual SemDial (WatchDial) will follow on July 18-19.

We are working on hosting a full-scale in-person NASSLLI in the summer of 2021.
Here is a full list of originally planned NASSLLI 2020 courses and workshops (canceled)

Proposal submission deadline - October 31, 2019 (extended from September 30)

We invite proposals for courses and workshops that address topics of relevance to NASSLLI's central goal. Appropriate areas for courses include but are not limited to: semantics; pragmatics; computational linguistics; cognitive science; formal methodologies for the study of language and information, including methods for data collection and analysis for any subfield of linguistics (e.g., syntax, phonology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, etc.); logic and its applications; game and decision theory and their applications; formal epistemology, and philosophy of mind.

We particularly encourage submissions which address the theme (Formal and Computational Pragmatics and Models of Dialogue), and those representing cross-disciplinary approaches, especially courses showing the applicability of computational methods to theoretical work, and the use of theoretical work in practical applications. Courses involving a hands-on component (e.g., actual experience with NLP tools, coding, or machine learning algorithms) will be very welcome.

NASSLLI welcomes a variety of approaches and methodologies (logics, cognitive and computational modeling, formal semantics/pragmatics, machine learning, experimental approaches) as long as the material is relevant to language, information or communication.

Each course and workshop will consist of five 90 minute sessions, offered daily (Monday-Friday) during the week of the summer school. Sunday mini-courses will run for 3 to 5 hours.

We encourage potential attendees and instructors to check out previous NASSLLI programs at:

Courses and workshops should aim to be accessible to an interdisciplinary, graduate level audience. Courses may bridge multiple areas, or focus on a single area, in which case instructors should include introductory background, try to avoid specialized notation that cannot be applied more broadly, and spend some time discussing how the topic is relevant to other fields.

Workshop schedules are identical to course schedules, but usually consist of a series of presentations by different researchers; they may also include panel discussions. A workshop will be more accessible if its program is bracketed by broader-audience talks that introduce and summarize the week's presentations. Please note that NASSLLI cannot provide reimbursement for travel and accommodation for workshop presenters. Workshop proposals must include information about how the organizers expect these expenses to be covered.

Course and workshop proposals from women and underrepresented minorities are particularly encouraged.

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Proposal Guidelines/Submission Details

Proposals should be submitted in PDF format using EasyChair and should indicate the following:

person(s) in charge of the course/workshop and affiliation(s)
type of event: Sunday mini-course, one week course, or workshop. For mini-courses, specify how many hours you’d like them to be.
course/workshop title
motivation, description, and an outline of the course/workshop up to 500 words, plus appropriate references
special equipment (if any) needed to teach the course
a statement about the instructor's experience in teaching (including in interdisciplinary settings)
anticipated travel costs: workshop proposals must include (a) acknowledgement of the organizers’ understanding that NASSLLI will not provide reimbursement for invited participants and (b) an explanation of how these costs will be covered

Financial and Practical Details

Course instructors and workshop organizers

All instructional and organizational work at NASSLLI is performed completely on a voluntary basis, so as to keep participation fees to a minimum. However, organizers and instructors have their registration fees waived, and are reimbursed for travel expenses up to a level to be determined and communicated with the proposal notification, for at most one instructor per course, and at most one organizer per workshop, and cannot guarantee full reimbursement of travel costs for lecturers or organizers from outside of the US. In addition, we will make available appropriate accommodation for participating faculty, and will aim to cover the accommodation costs for instructors/organizers utilizing this accommodation, subject to the limit of two persons per course/workshop.

We encourage all instructors/workshop organizers to fund their own travel and accommodation if this is feasible, since this will allow us to use more of our funding for student scholarships and for reimbursement to instructors without funding sources.

Due to federal mandates, we can only reimburse air travel booked on US-based airlines.

Additional information for workshop organizers

NASSLLI 2020 cannot reimburse travel, accommodation or registration expenses for lecturers/speakers invited by workshop organizers. Registration for these invitees will be at reduced cost. Workshop proposals should include a plan to obtain funding for reimbursement of invitees, or should state that all invitees will fund their own travel and accommodation.

WeSSLLI and SemDial 2020