Research News

The Center of Excellence on Women and Social Security (CEWSS), Walailak University (WU), organized an international conference on Communicating in Multicultural Society and Transitional World to provide knowledge about communication within society, culture, and global change and to facilitate the knowledge exchange in Thailand and Southeast Asia. The event took place on March 28, 2024, at Meeting Room 1, Academic Building 5, along with an online platform, to celebrate the university’s 32^nd anniversary.

Presiding over the event was Assoc. Prof. Dr. Surin Maisrikrod, Vice President of WU, who delivered the opening speech. Over 30 participants, including personnel and students, joined this event and watched the show SEK PAENG from the Thai Dance Program, School of Education and Liberal Arts.

Among the distinguished participants were Dr. Chingduang Yurayong from the University of Helsinki, Asst. Prof. Dr. Adcharawan Buripakdi from Suranaree University of Technology, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sophana Srichampa from Mahidol University, and Dr. He Hui from Guangxi Normal University, who participated as keynote speakers and panelists.

During the event, interesting topics were presented, such as global citizenship education and metrolingualism in Chinese ELT textbooks and primary school curricula, multilingual communication, and Thailand’s national language policy and its language and culture relationship in multicultural societies.

Dr. Chingduang Yurayong discussed the "Transition of language structure in Multicultural society: Grammatical gender, quantification, and negation in languages across Eurasia," which examined the dynamic nature of language, both internal and external, that influenced the changes in various languages and used to classify language into different structures. Furthermore, he discussed the language changes resulting from contact between multilingual groups of people and explained the beginnings of new language patterns and human civilization.

"I viewed each of the topics and found them to be interesting, and I enjoyed learning about several of them. Particularly, in the context of the nexus of generative AI and language education because Walailak University recently started to use English as the medium of instruction for all subjects," said VP Surin Maisrikrod.

In the afternoon, there were presentation sessions about historical discourse analysis of lesbianism in Thai media from 1996 to 2020 and the construction of teacher identity in the digital spotlight.