A successful CIP symposium 2025
This year’s CIP Symposium with the title New Literacies – the role of multilingualism and generative AI was held on Thursday, November 6, 2025. The symposium focused on how multilingualism and generative AI (GenAI) could contribute to the concept of new literacies in academia.
Keynote presentations
The symposium opened with two keynote presentations, both of which addressed the symposium’s theme from different perspectives. In the first keynote, Ron Darvin from The University of British Columbia argued that while the use of GenAI in academic contexts can support students’ academic skill development and help strengthen their communicative competences, it poses a risk of suppressing writing style diversity. Therefore, he suggested taking a critical perspective on the uses of GenAI, which could be achieved by strengthening users’ digital skills.
In the second keynote, Slobodanka Dimova from CIP presented an overview of how the literacy construct had evolved over time -- from basic literacy skills to literacy skills that support multilingual and multimodal communication within academic and disciplinary contexts. She, then, raised the question of whether these new literacies represent extensions of a unified literacy conceptualization or multiplication of literacy constructs.
Generative AI and multilingualism in theory and practice
In the afternoon part of the programme, a series of presentations provided insights into current research that focuses on students’ GenAI and multilingual practices in academic settings. The first three presentations focused on students’ use of GenAI in terms of how it affects their writing processes, knowledge development approaches, and study practices. First, Tine Wirenfeldt Jensen from the Danish School of Education - Education Studies, Emdrup discussed how the use of GenAI could support students’ “writing identity.” Then, Sanne Larsen and Kasper Engholm Jelby and Rafael Lomeu Gomes from CIP presented findings from two ethnographic case studies that focused on students’ practices and perceptions regarding GenAI. The studies are part of a larger project, AI and the University, funded by Carlsberg Foundation.
The last two CIP presentations of the day dealt with new theoretical models related to assessment literacy and multilingual communicative competence. Marella Tiongson argued that the current language assessment literacy frameworks fail to capture the multilingual realties in internationalized higher education. Beatrice Zuaro proposed a new model of multilingual communicative competence that focuses on the individual rather than the context. These presentations are based on a larger DFF-funded project, Towards a new model of communicative competence in multilingual higher education.
Concluding panel
The day concluded with a lively panel, where discussions centered on the role of GenAI in the development of academic and disciplinary literacy skills and in the maintenance of multilingualism in the academic context. The panel also explored the consequences that an increased use of GenAI could have for teaching and research in higher education.
Hope to see you next year
You can find more information about the presentations at the symposium in the box to the right.
We hope to see you (again) at the CIP symposium 2026.
