A Brief History of EAP Day Berlin


The Arbeitskreis der Sprachenzentren an Hochschulen and the Bremer Symposion have both held conferences for teachers of foreign languages in higher education for many years. A group of teachers at universities in Berlin and Brandenburg as well as teachers at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum saw a need for a conference for teachers of EAP and ESAP. The former group started the EAP Day Berlin (that has also taken place in Brandenburg three times). The latter group organised two ESAP conferences in Bochum.

The first EAP Day took place at the Wildau University of Applied Sciences in 2012. It was organised by Martin Bradbeer, the head of the Centre of Competence for Teaching in English. Its primary focus was on internationalization in tertiary education. It attracted participants from Germany and five other European countries reflecting a need for a forum to discuss EAP issues

In 2013 the EAP Day was organised by the English Department of the Language Centre with David Bowskill and Mat Plews as the main organisers and was hosted at the Humboldt University Berlin. The theme was “The Future of EAP”.

In 2014 we moved backed to Brandenburg to a general EAP Day organised by David Meier and hosted at the University of Potsdam, including a discussion of various themes including academic writing, assessment, cultural differences and meeting the needs of international students.

In 2015 we stayed in Brandenburg for an EAP Day on the topic of “Cultures of Teaching and Cultures of Learning” organised by Jeff Purchla and hosted by the language centre of the Viadrina University Frankfurt/Oder with the support of David Furmanek, the managing director of Viadrina Sprachen GmbH.

In 2017 our colleagues at the language centre at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Alan Davis, Melissa Mariano, Anna Soltyska und Anna Timukova, organised and held the first ESAP Day. We had agreed to hold the EAP and ESAP days in alternating years.

In 2018 the EAP Day returned to Wildau. It was organised by Vicky Allan and Martin Bradbeer and its theme was “Integrating Content and Language in Higher Education”.

In 2019 the second ESAP Day on the topic of “Something old, something new: mediation in the context of ESAP” took place at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

In 2020 the Pandemic put a stop to any face-to-face EAP Days. The new normal, namely hybrid events (one positive development of the Pandemic) played a role in a return of the EAP Day to Berlin. The team got back together and organised the two most recent EAP Days.

In 2024 we were back in Berlin at the Berlin School of Economics and Law. Vicky Allan and Mariana Ramírez organised the EAP Day with the theme “Whose English? Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) in English Language Teaching (ELT).”

Last year (2025) we stayed in Berlin at the Berlin campus of the UK-based Arden University. Mandy Welfare and Annie Herringer with the technical online support of Mariana Ramírez organised our most recent EAP Day on the topic of “The EAP Classroom: Multicultural, Multilingual, Multimodal”.



The 2026-2027 Organising Committee