On the 7th-11th of July 2025, 18th Annual International Conference on Languages and Linguistics, held by the Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), took place in Athens, Greece. Researchers, teachers and administrators from universities around the globe participated in the Conference and presented over a hundred papers.
As the President of the Athens Institute, Gregory T. Papanikos said in his Opening and Welcoming Remarks, ATINER Conferences are non-thematic, which is in accord with the mission of the Institute. The idea is to attract as many researchers as possible and have them share their ideas with as many participants as possible, thus spreading the word and enriching the minds of scholars in the city which has welcomed strangers for thousands of years, (“We never expel a stranger who comes (to Athens) to see and learn”, from an authentic document of the 5th century BC). The Organising Committee is also most favourable to the authors proposing their presentations: they accept as many proposed presentations as the ATINER mission determins: there is no “lynching” of applicants like elsewhere in Europe before hearing them. That is why the atmosphere is most favourable to the speakers, exchanges with other participants are pleasant and profitable, and messages from the speakers are most informative. Such conditions are really gainful to researchers. ATINER conferences are events of the exchange of information and socializing because the receiving Greek community care about the pleasure of stay and communication in the mode of free people, which was also emphasised by the President, who keeps reminding the participants that they are free people, not slaves. (“I am not paid, I’m a free man.” “He is a helper. He is not a Zulu. A Zulu is a slave” etc). The Cultural programme for Conference participants is also organized so that the participants experience the pleasure of free men.
The topics of presentations at the Conference included teaching practice, results and experience, organisation of studies and advice to students, languages and language use and theoretical considerations. A major presentation, on the 7th of July, was one titled: Cultivating ISI: Shaping the Future of Idiomatics in Language Education and Research, given by Professor John Liontas, University of South Florida, USA. Professor Liontas likes to begin his presentations by sieve-testing the audience’s familiarity with English idioms. This wakes up the audience, places them in a dependent position and obliges them to attention, which is a very disciplining start. The claim of Professor Liontas is that idiomatic theory is fragmented, with everybody presenting his/her hypothesis”/ There are over 70 terms of idioms current in literature on idiomatics. Idiomatics deserves a renewed focus on how we use language. Idiomatics includes cognition, linguistics and semantics/ The theory of idiomatics has to be linguistically grounded and be applicable to any language. It must be an authority. It must definitive. It must resort to the study of social, psychological and linguistic models in how speakers perceive, process meaning and form an image in their minds. Here competence, (what one knows) and performance, (what one can do with language), matter. Idiomatics stretches over the areas of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos of idiomatics proper, (a reference to an earlier publication of Professor Liontas).
Several academics from the USA presented on the problems of inclusive education, anti-social behavior and its effect on people in the academy, academic freedom in universities, verbal aspects in English and other social-administrative and academic themes. Professor Leah Hollis, The Pennsylvania State University, USA, spoke of anti-social and oppressive behavior, which was generalized in her title as: The Endangered University: Grappling with the Politicized, Anti-Intellectual Attack on American Higher Education. Leah also suggested ways of how to resist and overcome such attacks in University.
Professor Burcu Ates, Sam Houston State University, USA, spoke of how it is important and how it is possible to extend the outlook of students relating to another culture even in so big a country as the USA. Her presentation, co-authored with Francisco Usero-Gonzales, Sam Houston State University, and Helen Berg, Sam Houston State University, was titled: Navigating Language, Culture, and Identity: Pre-Service Teachers’ Reflections on a Transformative Study Abroad Experience in Costa Rica. She herself said she travelled mainly in the USA, and going “abroad was an experience”. Similarly, students can profit from international and cross-cultural relations and communication. She mentioned, specifically, Costa Rica and how people there were “happy to collaborate with” them. Professor Ates also mentioned that the ATINER Conference last year helped them connect with people and cooperate. She appreciated such relationships so much that she finished her talk by inviting those present in the audience, who were interested in intercultural cooperation, “to talk to us”. (As I’m writing these words now back home in Vilnius, Lithuania, I am very sorry I missed the moment to talk to Professor Ates there in Athens about their ideas of intercultural cooperation for the students’ and teachers’ sake).
Professor Ali Khalil, Community College of Rhode Island and Arkansas State University, USA, gave an essential talk on what the best ways to advise students are, in a presentation titled, Student Retention: The Impact of Advising Models on Student Success in the American Higher Education System. He dismissed the market style advising based on formal and financial criteria as least helpful and gave more details on the uses of continuous advising done by the same adviser, who can be specially employed people or professors themselves, which begins in the first year and continues, and the accelerated model of advising, which is shorter than the previous. Ali emphasised that “feeling connected was essential for students” and that the same adviser in consistent support was also very important. His conclusion was that advising students was essential as about 50% of students in USA Universities do not graduate for financial and merit-based reasons, and it is advising that can help them stay on and graduate with a degree.
Academic Katarzyna Roszkowska, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, EduScrum as a Teaching Method and Its Influence on Language Anxiety among Vocational School Students. spoke about a specific method in academic achievement and positive influence of the students’ psychology. Anna Varkan, Senior Lecturer, HSE University, Russia, spoke about exceptionalism in America as reflected in the novel of Michael Chabon, The Concept of Exceptionalism in the Selected Novels of Michael Chabon. It was interesting to follow her argument as I was familiar with Mchael Chabon, who had been introduced in the American Center in Vilnius several years ago. Marija L Drazdauskiene presented on a study of the use of proper names and on what it indicates about the development of language, Insights into the Development of Language. The use of proper names was shown related to the meaning and use of idioms, the meaning of which divides into active and latent which accumulates as the latent meaning or the idiom of language which tests and challenges all the speakers of the language.
The Cultural Program of the Conference included a walking tour in Athens, sailing to selected island of the Aegean and trips to Mycenae, Delphi, Ancient Corinth and Cape Sounion, in my personal option. A visit to the Aristotelian Lyceum in Athens was a new visit this summer. It showed sports fields and facilities and the School on a very hot day when even eucalyptus leaves seemed wilted. This Lyceum was the place where Alexander the Greak (or Alexander the Greek, in Greek idiom) was educated. Boys there practised physical exercises, studied grammar, writing and philosophy and were well educated.
A visit to Delphi and \cape Sounion were the most memorable this year. Although the guide’s talk was shorter than that in earlier years, Delphi and Mount Parnasus left an indelible impression on the group. It was not known how many participants hankered for poetic inspiration during this visit to Delphi but the Mountain ill remain in the mind of everybody who saw it on a scorching day in Greece.
I am very grateful to the Organisers of this Conference and to the Athens Institute for the invitation. It was a great and memorable event.