As an additional part of the conference, the Department of English Language Teaching, University of Jaffna, will hold a mentoring workshop on 15th and 16th of August 2026 on publishing in topics related to English, linguistics, and language teaching for scholars who might benefit from feedback on their works in progress. International experts on research and publishing will conduct sessions where participants’  manuscripts will be discussed and suggestions offered for submission to promising academic journals. It is expected that some of those participating in the conference will benefit from this more advanced professional development opportunity.

Faculty Experts

• Prof. Sender Dovchin, Curtin University, Australia
• Associate Prof. Max Spotti, Tilburg University, Netherlands
• Prof. Rhonda Oliver, Curtin University, Australia
• Dr. Vydehi Rajapillai, University of Brighton, UK
• Prof. Suresh Canagarajah, Pennsylvania State University, USA

Procedure:
Each participant will be expected to submit a manuscript they are drafting for publication ahead of the workshop. During the workshop, the participants will first briefly describe their research and the challenges they face in writing the paper. This will be followed by 30-45 minutes of discussion where the experts and other participants offer suggestions for improving the manuscript for a successful journal publication. Feedback will focus on: suitable journals for the manuscript; the guidelines of journals for preparing the manuscript; relevant recent scholarship and literature review that should be included; ways of strengthening the data analysis, findings, and discussion; and areas for improving style and grammar.

As this is a hand-on workshop, the number of participants will be kept small to facilitate detailed discussion and close interactions. Interested participants will send 6000 to 9000 word manuscripts, with an abstract and references on or before 1st of June; accepted manuscripts will be notified by 15th of June.  Deadline for registration (for those who are accepted) will be 1st of July, 2026.

All the manuscripts of the mentoring workshop should be sent to icde@univ.jfn.ac.lk . The workshop will be held in the Department of English Language Teaching, University of Jaffna, Thirunelvely, from 9am to 5pm on both days.