English-medium instruction (EMI) involves the teaching of academic content through the medium of Englishin contexts where it is not a majority language, thereby creating a space in which students from differentlinguistic and cultural backgrounds meet on common linguistic ground in shared learning experiences.Although EMI is often believed to be an English-only environment, the existence of multiple languages andlanguage practices are common in many such nominally English-only classrooms across the globe. Thus,the ensuing reality in EMI contexts is a plethora of de facto language policies and classroom practices thatare rarely monolingual. Translanguaging, which can be understood as a theory as well as pedagogy, offers aview of all linguistic resources as legitimate for learning. The fact that EMI and translanguaging may existside-by-side is not new. However, empirical research is key to an innovative understanding of theaffordances available for learning, communicating, building identity, dismantling language hierarchies,promoting social justice, and resisting monolingual ideologies when EMI and translanguaging are allowedto be juxtaposed.In this colloquium, we first address some of the definitions, methodologies, and ideologies involved inglobal EMI and translanguaging. Following this introduction, three individual papers focusing on empiricalstudies of EMI and translanguaging in Kazakhstan, Malawi, and Cambodia, respectively, will be presented.These studies reveal how translanguaging has been understood and approached in the various educationalcontexts with different named languages represented. Finally, our invited discussant will first providecomments on the four presentations, before we invite a full-audience discussion of the empirical studies’theoretical and pedagogical contributions to how translanguaging can be understood and applied in EMI contexts, as well as reflections regarding future directions for the research field.
2 hour colloquium