Events
Call for Papers: Tracing Albanian in Time, Space, and Texts
International conference | June 8th–June 10th, 2026
The University of Basel, its Department of Ancient Civilizations, and the Lectureship in Comparative-Historical Linguistics, together with the Institute for Slavic and Eastern European Studies of the University of Zurich, invite you to Tracing Albanian in Time, Space, and Texts, an international conference on Albanian historical linguistics and philology, which will take place in Basel, Switzerland, from June 8th to 10th, 2026. We aim to bring together scholars and students studying the history of the Albanian language and its texts and welcome contributions dealing with the history of Albanian in the broadest sense. Possible topics include:
❖ Old Albanian texts, their analysis, and their background
❖ Old Albanian linguistics
❖ The reconstruction of Proto-Albanian and its pre-stages
❖ Ancient, medieval, and modern language contact between Albanian and other languages
❖ (The history of) dialect variation within Albanian
❖ Albanian etymologies
Proposals regarding original, previously unpublished research are invited in two formats: individual papers (for slots of 20+10 minutes) and posters. We encourage BA and MA students who have worked in this field to submit an abstract. Abstracts for oral or poster presentations should be no longer than 450 words (including references and 3–5 keywords). Abstracts for oral presentations must be submitted by October 1st, 2025, and the decision on acceptance will be communicated by December 1st, 2025. The inscription for poster presentations is open until December 31st, 2025, with the decision on acceptance being communicated by February 15th, 2026.
All submissions must be sent to aliaconference2026@cluttergmail.com in either .docx, .tex, or PDF format. Oral presentations may be given in English, German, French, or Italian, but English is preferred. Posters may be written in one of these four languages or Albanian.
For more details, please visit the conference website: https://sites.google.com/view/alia-conference-2026.
Workshop: Albanian language history in its Balkan linguistic context (30.01.2024)
On Tuesday 30.01.2024, the project “The Albanian Language in Antiquity", funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, will organize the workshop “Albanian language history in its Balkan linguistic contact” at the University of Basel. The participants will discuss Balkan linguistics with a focus on historical linguistic phenomena relevant to the history of the Albanian language. The talks will concern language contact between Albanian and Slavic, Greek and Romanian in the scope of the project. All interested in the Albanian language and Balkan linguistics are invited and welcome to attend.
The talks and discussions will be in English. No prior registration is required.
Location: Rosshofgasse 2 (Schnitz, Seminarraum S01), 4051 Basel.
Program:
10:00 | Introduction by PD Dr. Michiel de Vaan | |
Block 1: Albanian and Greek | ||
10:15 | Prof. Dr. Doris Kyriazis | Greek and Albanian, two languages in contact (A review of relevant etymological research, new data, problems, perspectives) |
11:15 | Gerard Spaans MA | The etymological history of the Greek loanword liqen-i |
12:00 | Lunch break | |
Block 2: Albanian and Balkan Romance | ||
13:30 | Prof. Dr. Lorenzo Filipponio | Late Latin and Balkan-Romance phonology and its reflexes in Latin loanwords in (Proto-)Albanian |
14:30 | Alexander Robert Herren MA | On the importance of Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian for Albanology |
15:15 | Coffee break | |
Block 3: Albanian and Slavic | ||
15:45 | Prof. Dr. Ekaterina Tarpomanova | The hows and whens – as well as whys – of evidentiality in Bulgarian and Albanian |
16:45 | Closing remarks by the organizers | |
For inquiries on the workshop, please get in touch with one of the organizers:
Gerard Spaans MA: gerard.spaans@clutterunibas.ch
Alexander Robert Herren MA: alexanderrobert.herren@clutterunibas.ch
project presentation "The Albanian Language in Antiquity
On Monday 13 March 2023, Michiel de Vaan, Sergio Neri, Geert Jakob Spaans and Alexander Robert Herren presented the SNSF research project "The Albanian Language in Antiquity". Furthermore Olivier Winistörfer (UZH) has presented his Phd project The Balkan Sprachbund - A different approach".
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