Secondary conference 2025: Perspectives on literacy

Ticket price:

£150 general admission

In addition to talks from keynote and guest speakers, delegates can choose to attend three workshops. Resources from all speakers and workshops will be made electronically available to delegates after the conference.

Keynote speakers

Alice Deignan, Professor of Applied Linguistics at the School of Education, University of Leeds

The linguistic challenge of the transition from primary to secondary school

Alice Deignan will discuss her ESRC-funded research 'The linguistic challenge of the transition from primary to secondary school'. Her work analyses differences in language, especially vocabulary, across years, key stages and disciplines, in collaboration with teachers.

Kit de Waal, award-winning author and academic

Kit is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor and Jean Humphreys Writer in Residence at Leicester University.

Her debut novel My Name Is Leon was an international bestseller, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award, longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award for 2017. In 2022 it was adapted for television by the BBC. It is now on the GCSE curriculum for schools.

(Image credit: Paul Crowther)

Guest speakers

Ruth Page, Professor in Applied Linguistics, University of Birmingham

Critical literacy: combatting influencer misinformation on social media

Ruth Page's research interests focus on how stories are shared in social media. Her guest speaker session will explore her current research on how in the face of the current mental health emergency, young people are increasingly turning to ‘social media DIY’, including social media influencers as a source of help. She will discuss how the explicit and implicit health education from influencers requires complex skills which span critical thinking, linguistic, multimodal and algorithmic literacies.

Bobby Joseph, UK Comics Laureate

More guest speakers to be announced

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