Chartered Institute
of Linguists
NEWS & VOICES
By Alex Myatt
'The click'
Curiosity is something shared by all linguists. The decision to study other languages and cultures is often a product of this curiosity, but not always. Speaking personally, I know that there was a specific moment that gave me ‘the click’, and ever since, I’ve known that I wanted to follow the path of language study.
A few years...
By Dom Hebblethwaite A record day for the CIOL Online Conference
The Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) Online Conference 2026 took place on Thursday 30 April, drawing a record audience from across the world for what proved to be the most popular CIOL Online Conference to date.
Following on from the in-person CIOL Conference 2026 at Bush House, King’s...
By Roger Barlow
Restless. Confused. Uncertain. Unmotivated. Lethargic. That pretty much sums up my state of mind in 1998. I’d just finished an uninspiring degree in Industrial Mathematics at Staffordshire University, my life was going nowhere, slowly, and I had no idea what career to pursue. The one thing I did know was that, regrettably, I had no...
by Cynthia Lucy Stephens
As libraries get weeded and traditional printed books get culled, as modern electronic books get pirated by corporate behemoths for AI training, a symbolic figure in the fight against this destruction of a civilization is Jorge Luis Borges, the writer from Buenos Aires who once imagined Paradise as a library.
Borges described...
By Callum Darragh
Did you know that there are at least five indigenous languages in the British Isles other than English? These include Cornish in Cornwall, Welsh in Wales, Manx on the Isle of Man (a Crown Dependency closely linked to the UK), Scottish Gaelic in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and Irish in Northern Ireland. Not all of these languages...
By CIOL Council Member and UCFL Vice-Chair of Languages and Intercultural Education Marcela A. Cazzoli
The Chartered Institute of Linguists can be seen, from within universities, as something slightly external to our work. It sits alongside the sector rather than within it. For many academics, particularly those in more theoretical areas, engagement with a professional...
By Michael Lynas Director, UK and Europe Duolingo.
Too often, the story we tell ourselves about languages in the UK is a negative one: that we are not very good at them; that young people are losing interest; that, in a world where English is widely spoken, they matter less than they once did. But the evidence points in a different direction....
by Michelle Deeter
The 2026 Spring Consecutive Interpreting Mock Conference was held on 23 and 24 April 2026, at the interpreting suite at Newcastle University. The university invited six speakers from China and all over the UK to take part in the two-day conference, giving our interpreting students a chance to learn about new industries and interact...
By Callum Darragh
On Friday 16 April 2026, I had the pleasure of attending the 2026 annual conference of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. As it was my first conference with CIOL, I genuinely didn’t know what to expect. I had been a student member during my Master’s degree in 2020, but only got around to renewing my membership in January of this year. As...
By Marion Sadoux - Director of the Language Centre at the University of Oxford
The strategic importance of language education in the UK has been powerfully reaffirmed in The strategic case for languages in UK higher education (January 2026), a report by the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) and the Association of...