Dear colleagues,
We are pleased to announce a forthcoming Special Issue of Computer Speech & Language on: Spoken Language Generation: Methods, Evaluation, and Applications.
The special issue is organised in conjunction with INLG 2026 and will focus on research at the intersection of natural language generation and speech technology. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Content planning, dialogue act realisation, surface realisation, and end-to-end approaches to spoken language generation
Language generation for text-to-speech and speech-to-speech systems
Prosody-, emotion-, persona-, and audience-aware spoken language generation
Multimodal generation involving speech, gesture, gaze, and embodied interaction
Spoken language generation in multilingual, cross-lingual, code-switching, and low-resource settings
Evaluation of spoken NLG
Robustness, factuality, safety, and responsible deployment of spoken language generation systems
The strongest papers accepted at INLG 2026 will have the opportunity to submit an extended versions of their work to the special issue. Submissions are also warmly welcomed from the wider research community and are not limited to INLG 2026 participants.
Submission deadline: 31 December 2026
Review process: rolling review, beginning immediately upon receipt of each submission
Editorial decisions: no later than two months from the submission date of each paper
Further information and submission details: https://www.sciencedirect.com/special-issue/336863/spoken-language-generati…
We would be grateful if you could circulate the call among colleagues and others who may be interested.
Best wishes,
Guest Editors:
Chenghua Lin, University of Manchester
Chao Zhang, Tsinghua University
Anton Ragni, University of Sheffield
Chenghao Xiao, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
Saad Mahamood, Shopware
Dear colleagues,
We invite you to participate in UniAgent, the 1st Shared Task on Agentic AI in University Administration, at CIKM 2026 in Rome.
UniAgent evaluates agentic AI in a bounded, enterprise-like environment: the administration of a public university.
THE TASK
Your agent is given a real administrative case from the University of Kassel. It has to retrieve the regulations that apply, plan the steps required, and produce a solution a human would accept, for example a compliant travel request.
Not every case can be approved as submitted. Agents must check the case against the applicable rules, found in the collection we provide. Agents must flag non-compliant cases with a justification.
Task Details: https://uniagent.webis.de/cikm26/uniagent26-web/agentic-university-administ…
IMPORTANT DATES
September 30, 2026: Registration closes
October 23, 2026: Task submission deadline
October 30, 2026: Notebook paper deadline
November 8, 2026: UniAgent session at the CIKM 2026 AnalytiCup
November 9 to 11, 2026: CIKM 2026 main conference, Rome
All deadlines are 11:59pm Anywhere on Earth (AoE).
LINKS
UniAgent: https://uniagent.webis.de
Register: https://www.tira.io/task-overview/uniagent-2026/
Forum: https://www.tira.io/c/uniagent
Contact: uniagent(a)lists.its.uni-kassel.de
We are looking forward to your submission!
The UniAgent team
----
Prof. Dr. Udo Kruschwitz
Lehrstuhl für Informationswissenschaft
Universität Regensburg | Universitätsstraße 31 | D-93053 Regensburg
Udo.Kruschwitz(a)ur.de
*<Lexicom/>*
a workshop in digital lexicography and lexical computing
*Registration open*
*Bari, Italy*15 – 19 September 2025
Your 5 days to get up-to-date with the latest developments in
*corpus-driven lexicography* and to practice your
*corpus building and corpus query skills* with some of the top experts in
the field.
For the programme, lecturers, invited speakers, fees and registration,
visit this website
*lexicom.courses <https://lexicom.courses/upcoming-lexicom/>*
I hope to meet you in Bari in September!
Ondřej
*Ondřej Matuška*
sketchengine.eu <http://www.sketchengine.eu/> | Facebook
<https://www.facebook.com/SketchEngine/> | LinkedIn
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/ondrejmatuska> | Twitter
<https://twitter.com/SketchEngine>
Deadline: 2 October 2026
Dear Colleagues,
We would like to share our call for proposals for the British Council English Language Learning and Assessment Research Grant (ELLAs) and our Language Assessment Awards. We welcome applications until 2 October 2026.
We currently have two funding opportunities:
* English Language Learning and Assessment Research Grants <https://www.britishcouncil.org/exam/english/aptis/research/grants-and-award…>
* Aimed at researchers around the world conducting research in language learning and assessment
* Research focus: Longitudinal studies into the impact of using AI in language assessment / language classrooms
* One project, up to £70,000
*
Find out more about the British Council products and data available at our open session, sign up here<https://www.britishcouncil.org/exam/english/aptis/research/grants-and-award…>.
* Assessment Research Awards<https://www.britishcouncil.org/exam/english/aptis/research/grants-and-award…>
* Aimed at Ph.D./Ed.D. students of language assessment and testing
* Up to £2,500 per award
For more information and application details, please visit: English Language Learning and Assessment Research Grants (ELLA) | British Council<https://www.britishcouncil.org/exam/english/aptis/research/grants-and-awards>.
For any queries, please contact: ELLARG(a)britishcouncil.org<mailto:ELLARG@britishcouncil.org>.
We look forward to receiving your submissions!
The British Council is the United Kingdom's international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. A registered charity: 209131 (England and Wales) SC037733 (Scotland). This message is for the use of the intended recipient(s) only and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender and delete it. The British Council accepts no liability for loss or damage caused by viruses and other malware and you are advised to carry out a virus and malware check on any attachments contained in this message.
*** KONVENS 2026 Call for participation ***
https://konvens2026.uni-hamburg.de/
We would like to invite you to participate on site at the Konferenz zur Verarbeitung natürlicher Sprache (KONVENS) 2026, organized under the auspices of the GSCL, the DGfS-CL, the ÖGAI, and SwissNLP. This year’s KONVENS will take place in Hamburg, September 14 – 17 under the special theme “Context Matters: NLP Beyond Text”. The conference will include a diverse program including talks by our two keynote speakers:
– KEYNOTE 1 –
Tuesday, 15 September 2026 · 13:30 –14:30 · Lecture Hall D
The Myth of Ground Truth: Why Context and Disagreement Matter for NLP
Barbara Plank
Abstract:
Natural language processing has made remarkable progress. Yet much of this progress still rests on a powerful simplifying assumption: that for every input there exists a single correct answer, a single ground truth, to be recovered independent of who is asking, who is answering, and in what context.
In this talk, I argue that this assumption is often at odds with how language actually works, and with the complex, ambiguous, and inherently human environments in which language technology operates. Meaning is filled in by context: by what a sentence implies rather than states explicitly, by who interprets it and what perspective, language, dialect, or background they bring. Drawing on research on human label variation, ambiguity, and the evaluation of foundation models, I show that this variation is natural, not noise to be eliminated, but signal to be understood. I close by considering what this means for generative AI and alignment.
Human-centered NLP is multi-faceted: building inclusive systems around people means building them around their disagreement, not despite it.
– KEYNOTE 2 –
Wednesday, 16 September 2026 · 09:00 –10:00 · Lecture Hall D
Evaluation in Context: Humans, Machines, and the Crisis of Validity
Valentin Hofmann
Abstract:
Language model evaluation is facing a crisis of validity: models increasingly excel on established benchmarks, yet benchmark performance can be a poor indicator of how systems behave in the wild. In this talk, I will argue that making evaluation meaningful requires taking context seriously — not only the context of the humans who use and are affected by language models, but also the context of the models being evaluated.
I will first examine social bias evaluation as an example of core validity issues in current practices and discuss efforts to build benchmarks that more closely reflect the ways in which people actually use language models as well as the harms they experience. Turning from humans to machines, I will then show how the value of an evaluation item depends on the model taking the test, and how this insight can be leveraged through psychometric methods to improve validity. I will conclude by making the case for a future of language model evaluation that takes into account both the humans around our systems and the machines in front of us.
Registration: https://konvens2026.uni-hamburg.de/index.php/registration/
====================================================================
Third CALL FOR PAPERS
The 4th Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Scientific Publications
(WASP 2026)
Co-located with IJCNLP-AACL 2026
November 10, 2026, Online
Website: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/WIESP/2026/ [1]
Submissions (OpenReview):
https://openreview.net/group?id=aclweb.org/AACL-IJCNLP/2026/Workshop/WASP
[2] ====================================================================
OVERVIEW
The scientific literature now grows faster than anyone can read it. The
claims, evidence, named entities, relations, and citations that
researchers rely on remain in unstructured text rather than in any form
a machine can use directly. Turning that text into structured,
machine-readable knowledge is a central problem in NLP, and many of the
questions it raises remain open.
WASP 2026 brings together researchers working to extract, structure, and
mine knowledge from scholarly publications. As large language models
reshape how scientific text is parsed, mined, and synthesized, this
iteration keeps information extraction at its center while broadening to
the full pipeline that turns publications into usable knowledge, from
summarization and retrieval to evaluation and the responsible use of
LLMs in scientific publishing.
WASP continues a series that began as the Workshop on Information
Extraction from Scientific Publications (WIESP) at AACL-IJCNLP 2022 and
IJCNLP-AACL 2023, and grew into WASP at IJCNLP-AACL 2025.
TOPICS OF INTEREST (not limited to)
- Scientific document parsing and structured information extraction;
citation context/span extraction and citation-based knowledge mining
- Scientific named-entity recognition and concept identification
- Scientific literature quality assessment and automated peer review
assistance
- Argument extraction and scientific discourse analysis
- Scientific article summarisation and headline generation
- Question-answering and fact retrieval from scientific literature
- Pretraining and fine-tuning LLMs on scientific corpora
- Evaluation and alignment of LLMs for scientific understanding
- AI-assisted scientific discovery and hypothesis generation
- Cross-lingual scientific knowledge transfer and multilingual
publication processing
- Scientific trend analysis and research gap identification
- Reproducibility and replicability analysis in scientific publications
- Ethical and responsible use of LLMs in scientific publishing
- Automated metadata generation and semantic tagging of scientific
publications
- Scientific plagiarism detection and research integrity monitoring
- Scientific collaboration network analysis and co-authorship prediction
- Automated scientific writing assistance and manuscript generation
- Scientific image and figure analysis in publications
SUBMISSION
Long papers: up to 8 pages of content (9 in the camera-ready), plus
unlimited references.
Short papers: up to 4 pages of content (5 in the camera-ready), plus
unlimited references.
All submissions are double-blind and must follow the host venue
formatting guidelines and ACL template files. We follow AACL-IJCNLP 2026
policies on anonymity, preprints, and double submissions. Accepted
papers will appear in the WASP 2026 proceedings in the ACL Anthology.
Submit via OpenReview:
https://openreview.net/group?id=aclweb.org/AACL-IJCNLP/2026/Workshop/WASP
[2]
SHARED TASK
WASP 2026 will host a shared task. Details and a separate call for
papers will be announced soon. System description papers will undergo
light peer review and appear in the proceedings.
IMPORTANT DATES (Anywhere on Earth)
*
Paper submission deadline (WASP): September 14, 2026
*
Registration deadline for shared task: September 13, 2026
*
System Run and Output Submission (shared task): September 13, 2026
*
System Paper Submission (shared task): September 14, 2026
*
Notification of acceptance (WASP + Shared Task): October 1, 2026
*
Camera-ready deadline (WASP + Shared Task): October 12, 2026
*
Workshop: November 9, 2026
ORGANIZERS
- Atilla Kaan Alkan, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian,
USA
- Alberto Accomazzi, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian,
USA
- Tirthankar Ghosal, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA
- Felix Grezes, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, USA
- Kelly Lockhart, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, USA
CONTACT
For inquiries: Atilla Kaan Alkan, atilla.alkan(a)cfa.harvard.edu
We look forward to your contributions.
Links:
------
[1] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/WIESP/2026/
[2]
https://openreview.net/group?id=aclweb.org/AACL-IJCNLP/2026/Workshop/WASP
The Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki invites applications for the position of
UNIVERSITY LECTURER IN DIGITAL HUMANITIES
for a permanent appointment starting on 1.12.2026, or as agreed.
Application deadline: October 3, 2028
More information: https://jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki-University-Lecturer-in-Digital-Humani…
The position is based in the Department of Digital Humanities<https://www.helsinki.fi/en/faculty-humanities/research/disciplines/digital-…> and is closely connected to the interdisciplinary Master’s Programme in Linguistic Diversity and Digital Humanities<https://www.helsinki.fi/en/degree-programmes/linguistic-diversity-and-digit…> (LingDig), particularly its Digital Humanities study track. Working with other Digital Humanities staff, the appointee will develop both the DH curriculum and teaching in digital and computational methods for the Faculty of Arts more broadly. An increasingly important part of the role will be to engage students across disciplines, create meaningful pathways into computational work, and develop teaching in dialogue with them. The University Lecturer will collaborate across the Department’s research groups.
Applications, together with the required attachments, must be submitted through the University of Helsinki Recruitment System by 3.10.2026 at 23:59 local Helsinki time.
Further information about the position is available from Mikko Tolonen, professor of Digital Humanities, mikko.tolonen(a)helsinki.fi. For questions about the recruitment process, please contact recruitment(a)helsinki.fi (please indicate the title of the position in the heading of the email).
*****************************************************************
Jörg Tiedemann
Language Technology https://blogs.helsinki.fi/language-technology/
University of Helsinki
Full information here: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/qdlca27-pre-conference-workshop-research-infra…
Register here: https://forms.gle/H2DjTn7DaKcM8CXZ7
The QDLCA27 pre-conference workshop, organised by Dr Andrea Farina (King's College London), is a satellite event of the Quantitative Diachronic Linguistics and Cultural Analytics 2027 (QDLCA27) conference<https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/quantitative-diachronic-linguistics-and-cultur…>. The workshop will take place from Monday 11 (afternoon) to Wednesday 13 (morning) January 2027. It is supported by a CLARIN<https://www.clarin.eu/>-funded initiative (Days 1–2) and by the COALA – Computational Corpus Annotation for Quantitative Analysis of Latin Lexical Semantics<https://coala.er.kcl.ac.uk/about/?utm_source=chatgpt.com> project (Day 3), which also underpins the organisation of QDLCA27. Bringing together researchers interested in digital resources, computational methods, and linguistic annotation, the workshop is designed to provide participants with methodological knowledge and practical experience in the quantitative study of language change, while fostering collaboration across the historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and digital humanities communities.
The increasing availability of digitised texts, linguistic resources, and computational tools has transformed research in historical linguistics. However, making effective use of these opportunities requires a clear understanding of how data are created, structured, annotated, and analysed. This workshop addresses key challenges in quantitative diachronic research, including the use of research infrastructures, the management and interpretation of historical datasets, annotation methodologies, and the development of reproducible workflows.
The first two days of the workshop focus on research infrastructures, tools, and methodological approaches for quantitative diachronic linguistics. Participants will explore how digital resources and computational methods can support research on language variation and change, while also discussing practical challenges related to data access, the design and application of linguistic annotation schemes, comparability, and analysis. Through practical activities, participants will be introduced to the principles and practices of linguistic annotation and will gain hands-on experience in annotating historical language data, including considering how to define annotation categories, apply annotation schemes, and deal with ambiguity and competing analyses. They will also explore how annotated data can be leveraged for quantitative analysis and for investigating patterns of linguistic variation and change. The workshop includes opportunities for participants to discuss their own research interests and datasets, fostering exchange among researchers working with different languages, periods, and methodological approaches.
Confirmed invited speakers are Prof Marco Passarotti (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) and Dr Megan Bushnell (University of Oxford), who will share perspectives on computational approaches, research infrastructures, and digital resources for the study of historical language data.
The workshop is aimed primarily at PhD students and early career researchers who wish to develop their understanding of how to design and apply linguistic annotation and how annotated resources can support quantitative analyses of language change. It is suitable for researchers in historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and digital humanities, including those who are beginning to integrate computational methods into their work. The workshop aims to equip participants with practical as well as conceptual foundations needed to engage critically and creatively with quantitative approaches to diachronic linguistics, from the creation and annotation of historical datasets through to their quantitative analysis.
The workshop also builds on the broader research community developed through the seminar series Data in Historical Linguistics<https://datainhistoricallinguistics.wordpress.com/> and is part of the activities of the King's Linguistics Network<https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/kln>. Together, these initiatives promote dialogue on the role of digital data, computational approaches, and quantitative methods in advancing research on language history and linguistics more broadly.
Link: https://med.ucsd.edu/_files/post-docs/UCSD%20Postdoc%20Computer%20Scientist…
The position is for a postdoctoral fellowship to join an innovative, multi-disciplinary research team
funded by a prestigious NIH Director’s Avant-Garde Award (https://today.ucsd.edu/story/uc-san-
diego-researcher-wins-5.6m-nih-avant-garde-award-to-prevent-hiv-hepatitis-c-and-overdose). Dr.
Natasha Martin (https://profiles.ucsd.edu/natasha.martin) leads the project, with additional
mentorship from faculty specializing in biostatistics, infectious diseases, and epidemiology. The
project aims to revolutionize HIV and hepatitis C virus (HCV) prevention and resource allocation
for people who use drugs (PWUD) across the United States. The project will pioneer the integration
of large language models (LLMs) to create behavioral "digital twins," embedded within dynamic
epidemic and economic simulation models to guide real-world public health policy.
The Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health (IDGPH) at UCSD is in the
Department of Medicine in the School of Medicine of the University of California San Diego
(https://idgph.ucsd.edu/). IDGPH is a multidisciplinary center that includes faculty, postdocs, and
graduate students from Epidemiology, Social Sciences, Biostatistics, Medicine, and other
disciplines. IDGPH aims to eliminate the burdens of infectious diseases and health disparities by
delivering outstanding patient care, conducting world-class multidisciplinary health research,
directing the institutional response to antimicrobial resistance, preventable healthcare associated
infections, and emerging pathogens, and offering leadership, consultation and training on global
public health, equity, microbiology, and infectious diseases topics.
Position Title: Postdoctoral Fellow
Duties and Responsibilities: The postdoctoral fellow will develop, fine-tune, and evaluate large
language model–based methods to predict the preferences and likely choices of people who use
drugs regarding HIV, hepatitis C, overdose prevention, and substance use services. Using mixed
qualitative and quantitative participant data, the fellow will create and validate individual-level
behavioral “digital twins” that can generate realistic responses to questions about intervention
preferences, such as willingness to use long-acting injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis, hepatitis C
testing and treatment services, naloxone, syringe services, or medications for opioid use disorder.
Responsibilities will include data preparation and integration, prompt design and model adaptation,
development of reproducible computational pipelines, and rigorous evaluation of predictive
accuracy, calibration, reliability, and performance across participant subgroups. The fellow will
work closely with an interdisciplinary team spanning artificial intelligence, biostatistics,
epidemiology, infectious diseases, and substance use research, contribute to manuscripts and
conference presentations, and help advance responsible and transparent applications of LLMs in
research involving people who use drugs.
Position Qualifications: Candidates should have a doctoral degree in computer science,
biostatistics, epidemiology, or a related field. Strong computational skills and expertise in either AI
or machine learning. Start date and term are negotiable.
Position Instructions: Applicants should submit a cover letter, CV, and contact information for
three references to Matthew Rivera (mnr001(a)health.ucsd.edu).
Third and Last Call for Papers: The 7th Workshop on Gender Bias in NLP (GeBNLP 2026)
5th AACL & 15th IJCNLP, November 9, 2026
Hengqin, China (Remote-only mode)
About the Workshop
The GeBNLP workshop <https://gebnlp-workshop.github.io/> serves as a leading venue for the study, evaluation, and mitigation of gender bias in natural language processing. As large language models (LLMs) become foundational to recent NLP applications, addressing how these systems represent and affect different genders, alongside intersecting demographic axes such as race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, and ability, remains a critical challenge for the AI community. While foundational progress has been made in algorithmic debiasing and balanced data collection, recent large-scale evaluations reveal that state-of-the-art models continue to exhibit persistent stereotypes and confidence disparities across intersectional identities (Siddique et al., 2024; Savoldi et al., 2024). Our workshop serves as a multidisciplinary bridge, enabling researchers to define shared standards for tasks and metrics that ensure technical advancements are deeply rooted in the social and ethical realities of systemic harm (Dai et al., 2024).
Topics of Interest
We invite submissions on a wide range of topics related to gender bias in NLP, including but not limited to:
Measurement and Evaluation: New metrics and datasets for quantifying bias in LLMs, MT, and multimodal systems.
Mitigation Strategies: Technical approaches to debiasing (e.g., fine-tuning, adapter-based methods, or prompting strategies).
Multilingual and Cross-Cultural Perspectives: Bias in low-resource languages or non-Western cultural contexts.
Intersectionality: Research exploring how gender bias intersects with race, disability, age, or nationality.
Ethical and Legal Frameworks: Policy implications and the "Human-in-the-loop" role in auditing AI systems.
Authors are encouraged to go beyond binary gender definitions and discuss how their work addresses the complexity of intersecting stereotypes and the diverse demographic contexts involved.
Submission Guidelines
Long Papers are up to 8 pages and short Papers are up to 4 pages (excluding references and appendix).
Non-Archival Submissions: Authors may opt for non-archival submission, allowing work of standard conference quality to be presented without being published in the official proceedings.
Submission Link <https://openreview.net/group?id=aclweb.org/AACL-IJCNLP/2026/Workshop/GeBNLP…> (Blind submission is required)
Important Dates
Paper Submission Deadline: Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Pre-reviewed (ARR) submission deadline: Tuesday, September 29, 2026
Notification of Acceptance: Friday, October 2, 2026
Camera-Ready Version Due: Monday, October 12, 2026
Workshop Date: Monday, November 9, 2026
Paper Integrity Policy (Important)
We endorse the EMNLP 2026 Paper Integrity Policy <https://2026.emnlp.org/paper-integrity-policy/>. Submissions that misuse AI, include hallucinated citations, present thinly sliced contributions, or are entirely AI-generated may be desk rejected. AI-assisted writing is permitted <https://www.aclweb.org/adminwiki/index.php/ACL_Policy_on_Publication_Ethics…>, provided authors remain responsible for the work.
Organizers
Giuseppe Attanasio, Instituto de Telecomunicações, Lisbon
Christine Basta, Alexandria University & HiTZ, University of the Basque
Agnieszka Faleńska, University of Stuttgart
Vera Neplenbroek, University of Amsterdam
Debora Nozza, Bocconi University
Karolina Stańczak, ETH AI Center, Zurich
Marta R. Costa-jussà, FAIR, Meta
Christian Hardmeier, IT university of Copenhagen
References
Dai, Y., Gu, H., Wang, Y. and Wang, X., 2024, November. Mitigate extrinsic social bias in pre-trained language models via continuous prompts adjustment. In Proceedings of the 2024 conference on empirical methods in natural language processing (pp. 11068-11083).
Siddique, Z., Turner, L. and Anke, L.E., 2024, November. Who is better at math, jenny or jingzhen? uncovering stereotypes in large language models. In Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (pp. 18601-18619).
Savoldi, B., Papi, S., Negri, M., Guerberof-Arenas, A. and Bentivogli, L., 2024, November. What the harm? quantifying the tangible impact of gender bias in machine translation with a human-centered study. In Proceedings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (pp. 18048-18076).