Seminar Report
Exigency in the field of Speech Language Pathology in India
7th to 9th May 2018 held at IIAS, Shimla
Indian Institute of Advanced study (IIAS) Shimla organized a 3 days international seminar during 7th to 9th May 2018, titled ‘Exigency in the field of Speech Language Pathology in India’ with Dr. Lalitha Raja (Fellow, IIAS) and Dr. Shivani Tiwari (Associate Professor, MAHE) as the conveners of the event. A total of 22 participants, including Speech Language Pathologists, Linguists, Neurophysician, and research scholars attended the program.
The seminar invited abstract submission on the following five themes:
1. Studies in acoustic phonetics and phonology for Speech Language Pathology
2. Morphology and syntax studies for/on Speech Language Pathology
3. Semantics and pragmatics studies for/on Speech Language Pathology
4. Issues in bi/multilingualism in Speech Language Pathology
5. Corpus for Speech Language Pathology
The first day of the seminar began with an inaugural session where the welcome address was delivered by the Chairperson of IIAS, Prof. (Dr.) Kapil Kapoor. Dr. Kapil Kappor he briefed about the ancient literature in speech language pathology and the relevance of such studies in Indian context. His session was followed by the introductory remark and theme of the seminar presented Dr. Lalitha Raja, where she briefly presented the seminar framework and explained the goals and objectives and the seminar. The introductory remark was followed by the Keynote speech by Prof. (Dr.) Prathibha Karanth, wherein she highlighted the need and potential for collaboration of SLPs and linguists in India. She also raised the relevant issues in the field, both from clinical and research perspectives. The inaugural session ended with tea break and group photo.
The 3 days seminar involved 5 plenary sessions on the above mentioned themes by experienced professionals in the field. In addition, several invited presentations were delivered by the national and international speakers. The seminar hosted an international speaker Dr. Hakim Arif from Bangladesh. Another international speaker was Dr. Yazmin Ahmed Rusli from Kaula Lampur, Malaysia, who delivered her presentation through skype. There were also a few presentations by research scholars that were selected through the abstract evaluation process. All the presentations were followed by question-answer and discussion session where pertinent issues were raised and discussed.
The last session of the seminar was an open discussion forum to plan and discuss for the future collaborative work in the field of Speech Language Pathology. Dr. Prathibha Karanth chaired the session. Inputs were taken from all speakers regarding the action plan. Based on the inputs regarding the issues to be addressed and discussions from the participants, four working groups/committees were formed.
