Minutes of UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum’s AGM at BAAL, 16 September, 2005.  

Present: Richard Barwell, Angela Creese (minutes), Alexandra Jaffe, Ben Rampton (chair), Celia Roberts, Massimiliano Spotti, Karin Tusting.

1.	Apologies: Francesca Bargiela, Juliet Gillen, Rachel Hodge, Sarah Lawson, Deirdre Martin, Janet Maybin, Stef Slembrouck.
2.	Chair’s business: BR had a meeting with John Field who said that the BAAL EC would be asking SIGs to submit budgets for meetings and events prior to the meetings/events themselves.  SIGs would also be asked to set a deadline for enrolment at the event in question, potentially cancelling it if it didn’t look as though it would be financially viable.    The BAAL EC would also provide guidance  on the format of annual reports, and it is going to set up a new officer’s post to convene SIG issues.  BAAL fully  supports  the development of SIGs but was still in the process of developing systems for handling the increase in their numbers. 
3.	 Minutes: accepted as correct record.
4.	Officer’s report: AC apologized for not submitting the meetings coordinator’s report.  This is to follow.  
4.1	Convenor’s report: BR presented the convener’s report and said how enjoyable being the convener has been.  It was noted that we are now in the process of organising the 14th meeting of UKLEF events.  BR expressed gratitude for  BAAL’s support in waiving fees for colloquium participants at the 2005 BAAL annual conference.  UK LEF  would be covering travel expenses for presenters not typically attending BAAL. 
4.2	Treasurer’s report: Charges on the current bank account continue to accrue while the opening of a new bank account has proved slow.  RB reported that he will ask for the new bank account to be opened immediately using the signatures which the bank has already cleared.  RB reported that the one day events have been a good move financially and that they present a lower liability.
4.3	Communications secretary: KT reported that there are 167 people on the email list.  One quarter of these participants are international. Over the last year, one person has unsubscribed.  In sending the list of members to BAAL it was suggested that BAAL is given the total list showing all members but with an asterix against BAAL members. BR argued against the idea that all SIG members should be members of BAAL – it was important to  extend SIG membership to include international and other colleagues who are not necessarily members of BAAL.  The different rates for BAAL and non BAAL members at one-day events benefited BAAL members.  Discussions on a series of Working Papers on the website and processes of publication need to be further considered.  KT asked for members to give feedback on the website particularly if anything out of date or corrections were noted  
4.4	Meetings coordinator:  There was general agreement that the move to one day seminars has been successful.  There have been three this year (Birmingham, Bristol, King’s College London).  One day events have been easier to organise with the local organiser taking responsibility for programme and costings.  It was agreed that with these changes, the Meetings Coordinator’s role has changed from overseeing seminar events and speakers, to collecting information on each event and archiving it for future reference.
5.	Upcoming seminars and colloquia:  Janet Maybin is organising the next one day seminar at Open University on 4th March.  A colloquium proposal has been submitted to SS16 (Limerick) and recently accepted.  There was a lengthy discussion about how to organise a SIG contribution at the next BAAL annual conference (Cork, 2006).  The BAAL EC has suggested that all SIGs may be given a half day ‘Track’ but that a colloquium slot may no longer be automatically available. This is following a discussion to restrict the number of colloquia at BAAL. SIG colloquium proposals will be reviewed as any other colloquium proposal.  CR agreed that there was a feeling that colloquia dominated the conference programme and that delegates should be able to move around sessions more easily at particular times on the programme.  BR said that he felt it was important to retain colloquium for SIGs in order to continue fine tuned discussions, and would raise this at the BAAL AGM.  However, for next year it was decided that the LEF would support a Track of individual papers rather than submit a colloquium proposal.  LEF CC would need to think carefully about the best ways of bringing coherence to a track, and could  contact the membership email list in order to coordinate the track beforehand.  LEF members could  also  be involved during the track sessions  in order to pull out common themes for the audience.
6.	Other activities: BR reported that up to 4 journals have made approaches before and after  the 2005 colloquium on ‘Linguistic ethnography and the social sciences’, inviting us to submit  the papers for consideration as a special issue. There was a discussion about which general field the papers from the colloquium would best be published in (education, linguistics, sociolinguistics).  There was a general consensus that they did not belong in education and that a sociolinguistic journal would be most appropriate. AJ,  representing  Linguistics and Education said that journal would be interested in furthering the conversation through building contacts between UK LEF members and researchers doing linguistic anthropology in US.  Ways of doing so merited further consideration, and we could consider ways of optimising the use of our website.    KT was thanked for her work on recording publications on the website.
7.	Elections: The following were re-elected as officers for 2005 - 2007:  Ben Rampton as convenor, Richard Barwell as treasurer, Vally Lytra as ordinary member. 
8.	AOB:  There was no other business.