UniDive COST Action is a scientific network dedicated to universality, diversity and idiosyncrasy in language technology. We are looking for trainers for our winter training school in Yerevan, Armenia, organized at the Yerevan State University on January 20-24, 2026. The training school is dedicated to linguistic diversity and related topics. We are interested in various aspects of diversity relevant to NLP like lexical, syntactic, semantic, typological, cultural, genre diversity, etc. We invite course proposals covering (but not necessarily restricted to) the following:
- Introduction to typology for newcomers (especially from NLP)
- Diversity quantification in NLP
- Diversity and Large Language Models (LLMs)
- LLMs for low-resourced languages
- Enhancing diversity in models and datasets
- Using “universalist” resources (such as Universal Dependencies or PARSEME corpora) for typological research
- LLMs and language creativity vs. wooden language
Proposals of courses (4 pages max.) should be sent by Monday June 2, 2025 at the latest to Dan Zeman , Verginica Mititelu and Marie-Catherine de Marneffe , with the subject “UniDive training school proposal”.
The proposals should include:
- Title of the course
- Abstract, including the topics to be covered
- Level (introductory, intermediate or advanced course)
- Draft schedule, with a brief description of each session (max. 5 sessions of up to 2h each – the training school goes over 5 days, but courses do not have to be given every day, see the schedule of our previous training school)
- Necessary infrastructure
- Prerequisites for the trainees (bibliography to be covered, software to be installed, accounts to be created, etc.)
- Bibliography (highlighting the recommended readings for the trainees)
- Instructors, their affiliation, contact details and experience
Important dates (anywhere on Earth):
- Monday June 2, 2025: Submission of course proposals from potential trainers
- Thursday June 12, 2025: Notification
- Wednesday November 26, 2025: Publishing the prerequisites for the courses
- Tuesday-Saturday January 20-24, 2026: Training school
We cannot offer a salary for the courses themselves but long-distance travel costs of the trainers will be covered, as well as a daily allowance of 185 EUR (to cover hotel, meals and local transportation – see COST Annotated Rules, Annex A1-3.1 TRAVEL REIMBURSEMENT RULES).
Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Verginica Barbu Mititelu, Agata Savary, Dan Zeman (on behalf of the UniDive Core Group)