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How people write, learn, communicate and establish trust is becoming a central research question as generative artificial intelligence enters universities. In Copenhagen this week, an international conference is bringing sociolinguists and researchers from related fields together to examine those changes from the perspective of language and society.
Sociolinguistics and AI 2026 is taking place from 19 to 21 August at the University of Copenhagen’s South Campus. The event is organised by the university’s AI-UNI research project and its Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use. The final day of the conference is Friday, 21 August 2026. ([cip.ku.dk](https://cip.ku.dk/projekter-og-samarbejdsaftaler/ai-and-the-university/activities/?utm_source=openai))
Looking beyond the technology
The conference is not presented as a product showcase or a technical workshop. Its focus is the relationship between language, identity, education, social interaction and power in a period when text-generating systems are becoming part of everyday academic work.
That perspective reflects the wider purpose of AI-UNI, a University of Copenhagen research project running from 2024 to 2028. The project seeks to build an evidence-based understanding of how generative language technologies affect research, teaching and learning practices. It also examines what happens to the ways knowledge is produced, shared and assessed when people work alongside language models.
The project’s researchers are conducting linguistic and ethnographic case studies of how students and researchers use generative AI in their daily academic activities. Some of the cases address research practices, while others focus on undergraduate education. The aim is not to assume in advance how the technology will change university life, but to document those changes and develop concepts for interpreting them. ([cip.ku.dk](https://cip.ku.dk/projekter-og-samarbejdsaftaler/ai-and-the-university/?utm_source=openai))
Language, education and responsibility
The programme brings together several research traditions, including educational linguistics, language policy, linguistic anthropology, discourse studies, sociocultural linguistics and research on multilingualism. This makes the conference relevant not only to linguists, but also to teachers, education researchers and scholars interested in how institutions respond to technological change.
Among the themes listed by the organisers are language and education, minoritised and heritage languages, linguistic diversity, social interaction, identity and the changing relationship between humans and machines. The organisers particularly encourage empirical work, while also welcoming theoretical and methodological contributions.
Several keynote sessions provide a broad frame for the discussion. Maartje De Meulder’s work addresses language and communication, including the implications of AI systems for signing deaf communities. The programme also lists keynotes by Nicole Holliday and Britta Schneider. The conference schedule includes parallel research sessions, a poster programme and a publication forum for early-career scholars. ([cip.ku.dk](https://cip.ku.dk/english/projects-and-collaborations/ai-uni/slx-and-ai-2026/?utm_source=openai))
A forum for practical academic questions
For universities, the debate around generative AI is not limited to whether students should use it. It also concerns how writing is taught, how assessment can remain meaningful, how multilingual students are supported and how institutions distinguish between assistance, collaboration and authorship.
The Copenhagen conference places these questions within a wider social context. If language technologies influence how people formulate ideas or present themselves, they may also affect participation in academic communities. Students using different languages, dialects or communication systems may experience the technology differently. The conference’s emphasis on sociolinguistics therefore opens a space for discussing both opportunities and limitations without reducing the issue to a simple question of adoption or rejection.
The programme also draws attention to the conditions under which AI systems operate. Questions of agency, accountability, meaning and trust are part of the event’s academic framing. In practical terms, this means asking who defines the norms embedded in language technologies, whose language practices are represented and how universities can help students evaluate machine-generated text critically.
Support for students and early-career researchers
The organisers have made the conference accessible to students as well as established researchers. Participation is in person, and the standard conference fee is €130, with a reduced €100 rate for PhD students and other students. The fee includes lunches and coffee breaks. A conference grant from the Carlsberg Foundation supports the reduced student rate.
The programme’s publication forum for early-career scholars is another practical feature. It gives researchers at an earlier stage an opportunity to discuss publishing and to connect their work with the wider questions raised by the conference. In this sense, the event functions both as a research meeting and as a training environment for a field that is still developing.
Why the discussion matters now
Generative AI is already present in many academic settings, but the long-term effects on writing, learning and knowledge-making remain unsettled. Copenhagen’s conference approaches the subject through observed practices and social research rather than predictions alone.
That approach can help universities make better-informed decisions. Instead of treating AI as either an automatic solution or an unavoidable threat, researchers can examine how it is actually used, what kinds of support students need and which academic values require renewed attention. The result is a constructive conversation about technology that keeps language, people and education at the centre.
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