View the conference report here.

Confrence papers can be obtained from here.

Conference aims and objectives

Times of intense change are an opportunity to re-think strategies, to reduce inequalities and re-affirm commitments to social justice.  Policy attention to literacy inequalities generally focuses on how to include groups who have been marginalized from mainstream education (for instance, disabled people, minority linguistic and ethnic groups). This conference examined issues of literacy inclusion and exclusion, but also aimed to widen the debate, to include a focus on the geo-politics of differentiated and stratified literacy practices and texts as well as opportunities for transformation: how literacy as a process might help to challenge educational and social inequalities.  The conference was particularly timed to support and influence directions in international literacy research and policy during the UN Literacy Decade, following from the University of East Anglia Literacy and Development Group’s involvement in the UN Literacy Decade mid-term review of progress.  Click here to see the conference history and significance.


Conference themes and programme

The conference inviteed contributions exploring literacy inequalities from wide-ranging contexts and perspectives – including for example, adult literacy teaching, academic literacies, non-ethnocentric literacy practices, gendered literacy practices and digital literacies.  Although the focus of this conference were on adults, some papers presented research on schooling and literacy inequalities. We invited a wide range of participants engaged in literacy research, policy and training to present their ideas at this conference – including practitioners, teachers, and researchers from NGOs, government institutions, donor agencies and universities. This enabled us to contribute not only to respond to policy concerns in this area (particularly in the context of the UN Literacy Decade) but also to facilitate critical and reflective debate across methodological and professional boundaries.  

We invited papers on the following themes:

1. Literacy Policies and Social Justice

2. Literacy, change and contestation

3. Literacy materials: in and across organisations, communities and classrooms

4. Inequalities and epistemologies: exploring knowledges, oracies and literacies


Conference Programme

The full conference programme can be obtained from here.


Plenary speakers and abstracts:

Prof. Lynn Mario T. Menezes de Souza, Depto. De Letras Modernas, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil: ‘(Dis)Locating Literacy Knowledge: abandoning a view from nowhere’.

Prof. Suresh Canagarajah, William J and Catherine Craig Kirby Professor in Language Learning, Departments of Applied Linguistics and English, Pennsylvania State University: ‘The dilemmas of negotiating change in academic publishing practices’.

Prof. Brian Street, Kings’ College London: ‘An Ethnographic Perspective on Literacy Inequalities: The Power to Name and Define'.

Prof. James Collins, Department of Anthropology, University at Albany, USA.  'Literacy as social reproduction and social transformation: The Challenge of diasporic communities in the contemporary period'.

Dr. Cathy Kell, University of Waikato and Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand: ‘Literacy and the Spaces-in-between: Space and Scale as Mediators of Literacy Inequalities’.

Other confirmed speakers


Conference Organisation and a Joining Instruction

The conference was convened by members of the Literacy and Development Group at the University of East Anglia, along with an International Advisory Committee who have been actively involved in developing the programme. Since 2003, the Literacy and Development Group has organised an annual conference, with the aim of bringing together researchers, practitioners and policy makers working in this field (see http://www.uea.ac.uk/dev/literacy for further details of previous events).

Our 2009 conference was taken place at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.  

UN Literacy Decade Strategy Document can be downloaded from here.