The summer school "Long-form Recordings from A to Z" (LFRAZ-- pronounced l-fraz) takes place June 16-19, 2025 (Monday through Friday), in PSL University/Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris 5e, France).  Our goal is to allow attendees to learn everything they need to collect, analyze, and interpret long-form recordings. Mornings contain lectures and round tables with leaders of the technique. In the afternoon, attendees will engage in individual and group projects, with dedicated office spaces allowing exchanges between participants. Lecturers will also be available during pre-set office hours as well, during which attendees can ask additional questions. Moreover, to help attendees integrate this technique into their own research, meet-ups will be held monthly for the following 6 months.

The summer school is designed to train researchers in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data from long-form (also called daylong) recordings (LFR). LFRs are increasingly used, including to document language input and outcomes in under-described populations (e.g., Casillas et al., 2020); and to assess potential effects of early childhood interventions (e.g., Weber et al., 2017).

Our summer school aims to provide attendees who are newbies to the method with all the tools they need to collect and analyze LFRs. The mornings will feature lectures and roundtables with leading experts, while afternoons will provide opportunities for individual and group projects, as well as office hours for tailored support. Here's what attendees can hope for:

• Comprehensive Training: From data collection to modeling you’ll gain practical skills to integrate long-form recordings into your research.
• Networking Opportunities: The event brings together researchers from diverse fields, including linguistics, anthropology, economics, and developmental science.
• Automatic Speech Annotations: Learn to use open-source tools and hardware for analyzing speech data in culturally diverse contexts.

Videos of the morning training will be made available to the community at large.

Applications are done through a form, you can see an overview of the questions here and access the actual form here.

Registrations close on the 15th of January 2025

• Day 1: General Introduction & Data Collection Setup (Alejandrina Cristia, Elika Bergelson, Marisa Casillas)

• Day 2: Data Management, Law and Ethics (Cristia, Margaret Cychosz, Melanie Soderstrom)

• Day 3: Human annotation and Quality Control (Cristia, Soderstrom, Cychosz)

• Day 4: Automated Analysis and Software (Cristia, Loann Peurey, Alix Bourrée)

To ensure high quality of the educational proposal, we will admit a maximum of 20 attendees. To apply, we will ask you to fill in a form, where we ask you about your past and future research plans using LFRs. We will select people considering the following criteria emerging from the grant funding this summer school: 

• Technical background sufficient to benefit from the training

• How well-represented is the recorded population?

• Can the proposed research questions be answered using LFRs? 

• Does the proposed research appear feasible and unlikely to lead to ethical/legal issues? (e.g., proponent has collected data on similar scale in the past; obtained IRB in the past; is well-connected with and/or belongs to the recorded population)

The school itself will be free for attendees. Thanks to current funding, up to 7 individuals' travel and stay will be funded, based on perceived need and likelihood of increasing researcher diversity. 

Admissions and funding decisions will be sent to applicants by the 15th of February 2025.

The summer school will be held in Paris,

16 rue de l'Estrapade 75005, Paris

In an effort to minimize air travel and promote sustainable academic practices, and foreseeing that there may be more demand than what we can accommodate, we are inviting colleagues around the world to become "local organizers". Read more in the global-LFRAZ section