Babylonia, a vision...?

Abstract

Babylonia came to life in 1991 through the hard work of a group of humanists committed to building a multilingual, multicultural, open and tolerant society through the teaching and learning of foreign languages. Thirty-four years later, Babylonia is still with us, and its editorial team is still committed to holding constructive dialogues between researchers and educators, and the promotion of language teaching adapted to individual needs and particularities. We do this by keeping an eye on societal developments and being a platform for discussing their influence on language teaching and learning - the present issue is a fine example of this.

Yet, for over 30 years, Babylonia has also had to fight for its livelihood. It has been thirty-four years now that members of the editorial team have invested their time producing quality issues - and most of them do this voluntarily.

An issue of Babylonia represents hundreds of hours of work: brainstorming topics, choosing the most promising abstracts, writing articles and introductions, proofreading and editing, translating, layout, distributing.

Artificial intelligence will be able to help us with some of this work, but, for the time being at least, we're betting on human intelligence to provide critical and informed input to our thinking and practice.

We would like to thank the sponsors who have supported us for over 30 years (in particular the Swiss Federal Office of Culture), our institutional partners (Institut de plurilinguisme and CeDiLE), and the institutions that see the importance of supporting human work: In 2024, the HEP Vaud, the PHZH, the PHZG, the BCUL and the Canton of Ticino. In 2025, the PHZH, the PH Bern, the BCUL, and the Oertli Foundation (which is supporting this issue in particular: thank you!).

Our thanks also go to the members who help us with their subscriptions, and to some generous donors – you know who we mean!

As one of our readers said in response to the gradual online availability of our archives (take a peek!), it's “genial that all the wealth disseminated by your journal is now accessible to everyone! ”

A wealth, yes! But it's a wealth we fight for every day - and, we dare to hope, intelligently.

We hope you enjoy reading this issue on a highly topical subject, and that you enjoy delving into our archives for a diachronic understanding of this fantastic Babylonia idea!