Leo van Lier Lecture Series

Information about upcoming speakers can be found below; click on an event for more details. The series is primarily intended to support students in the TESOL and Teaching Foreign Language programs, but all lectures are free and open to the public.

Leo Van Lier

The Leo van Lier Lecture Series was established in 2013 to honor the memory of long-time TESOL and Teaching Foreign Language professor, Leo van Lier, who passed away on December 23, 2012.

The series was initially funded by Leo’s family and continues to be funded through donations from the public. Past speakers include Shirley Brice Heath (Brown University/Stanford University), Roy Lyster (McGill University), and Kim Potowski (University of Illinois at Chicago).

Virtual Exchange in the New Educational Landscape: Challenges for Foreign Language Teachers

Presented at the 2026 Association for Language Awareness (ALA) Conference

The Association for Language Awareness (ALA) held its 2026 biennial conference at the Middlebury Institute—the first time that the conference was hosted in the United States. The conference honored the legacy of the late Professor Leo van Lier, a founding member of ALA. The lecture featured renowned Virtual Exchange scholar Dr. Robert O’Dowd of the Universidad de León (Spain) who was introduced by Dr. Aída Walqui, the widow of Dr. Leo van Lier and former director of the National Research and Development Center for Improving Education for English Learners in Secondary Schools. Dr. Walqui was named one of the 50 most influential researchers in the field of English Language teaching in the last 50 years by International TESOL in 2016. Together, Drs. Walqui and van Lier were prolific authors contributing to pedagogies for equity and social justice.

Dr. Robert O’Dowd’s lecture is titled, “Virtual Exchange in the new Educational Landscape: Challenges for Foreign Language Teachers”. Virtual Exchange (VE) refers to the numerous online learning initiatives and methodologies which bring learners in online collaborative projects together with partners from different cultural backgrounds as part of their study programmes and under the guidance of teachers or trained facilitators. Its potential for giving learners authentic experiences of intercultural communication has made it a common practice in foreign language classrooms. However, VE in foreign language education has evolved significantly in recent years from its early focus on bilingual North-North partnerships to encompass diverse global collaborations, including North-South exchanges and partnerships with conflict zones. Watch the recording.

SOWLE Leo van Lier Panel

During the 2022 Symposium on World Language Education (SOWLE), held at MIIS, we hosted a panel in honor of Leo’s work, entitled  Ecology in Language Learning: Identifying Equitable Opportunities.  We invited the following researchers to speak about the ways in which Leo’s ideas have influenced their work and the projects that they’re working on currently as they explore ecology in language learning:  

• Steve Thorne, Portland State University
• Julie Sykes, University of Oregon
• Dongping Zheng, University of Hawaii
• Glenn Levine, University of California at Irvine 

We invite you to watch this panel presentation here.

Support

If you would like to support the Leo van Lier series with a donation, please click on the button below and in the Give To field select “Other” then type “Leo van Lier” in the Other field that appears and follow the rest of the on-screen instructions.

Past Events

Our past Leo van Lier speakers have given us great insight into a range of topics including the following:

• “Adopting a Critical Sociolinguistic Approach to Language Pedagogy in a Multilingual World” - Prof. Becky Pozzi (California State University, Monterey Bay): Language teachers have the responsibility to change how linguistic ideologies are formed in future generations, problematizing the educational and social structures that harm underrepresented, minoritized, and racialized students.
• “Translingual Youth Folklorists: Sustaining and Reinvigorating Expressive Cultures, Sounds, and Futures” - Prof. Cati de los Rios (UC Berkeley School of Education): Learning from the expressive practices of immigrant-origin bi/multilingual youth can point us to rich—and often invisibilized—moments of transnational and translingual literacy, language, and identity development.
• “Can we cross? - Epistemic and linguistic lines in a school for adult learners” - Prof. Johanna Ennser-Kananen (University of Jyvaskyla): Reflections on epistemic injustice, the unequal position of different knowledges and ways of knowing, particularly in schools and other educational contexts.
• “An Ecological Look at Language Classrooms and Health Disparities: Reflections on Boundaries, Roadblocks, and Pedagogical”- Prof. Maricel G. Santos (San Francisco State University): This talk discusses a range of constraints and opportunities in our efforts to strengthen the connections between learning in language classrooms and improved health outcomes.
• “Critical Language Awareness in L2 Literacy Instruction: Looking Backward, Outward, and Forward”- Prof. Shawna Shapiro (Middlebury College): In this lecture, Professor Shapiro briefly outlines how Critical Language Awareness (CLA) emerged, presents six principles for CLA, and offers examples of how these principles can be put into practice in literacy curricula for L2 writers in K–12 and postsecondary contexts.
• “Multiliteracies Pedagogy and Teacher Learning: Research Findings and Professional Development Needs“-Prof. Kate Paesani (University of Minnesota): Taking a praxis-oriented approach to teacher learning around multiliteracies pedagogy, Professor Paesani introduces key multiliteracies principles, summarizes the research findings, and concludes by providing an example of a professional development resource.
• “Does Discourse Really Make a Difference?”- Prof. Agnes Weiyun He (SUNY Stony Brook): This talk examines discursive features like sequential deletion, collaborative completion, re-voicing, and routinized sequences in college-level Chinese language classes and community-based Chinese heritage language classes.
• “Critical Content-Based Instruction”- Prof. Ryuko Kubota (University of British Columbia): This talk discusses what critical content-based instruction (CCBI) might look like by presenting an example of an advanced Japanese language course on “Memories of War” and critically reflects on CCBI challenges by drawing on an incident that occurred in a TESL methods class.