HISTORY

In 2003 at the Sociolinguistics Lab of Nanjing University, Xu Daming held the first of a series of annual scientific meetings on urban language surveys (ULS). The second meeting in 2004 became international with the participation of Richard Van Ness Simmons (Rutgers University, USA). In 2005 the conference was organized for the first time outside Nanjing by Werner Kallmeyer in Mannheim (Germany).
　In the same year, the Dutch research council NWO sponsored an internationalization network on Industrialization, Language Contact and Identity Formation in Europe and China (ILCI), led by Marinus van den Berg and Vincent van Heuven from Leiden University. In 2009, Hans Van de Velde and Martin Everaert (both from Utrecht University) successfully applied to extend this network until 2012. ILCI, the China Center for Linguistic and Strategy Studies of Nanjing University (led by Xu Daming) and the support of several Chinese universities played an important role in internationalizing the meetings, as well as bringing many Chinese students and scholars to the Netherlands, resulting in several institutional collaborations in teaching and research. From the beginning, the network established contact with Japanese scholars such as Kenji Tomosada and Bao Lianqun, who took up an active role in developing the network.
　In 2008 in Nanjing, the informal organization the International Network of Urban Language Studies (INULS) was established, while the annual meeting kept its original abbreviation (ULS) and was renamed to Urban Language Seminars. Gradually, given the fact that the network was expanding internationally, the need was felt to create an official organization. IAULS, the International Association for Urban Language Studies, was registered with the government of Macau SAR, China, on 22 March 2017. IAULS was founded on the basis of INULS (The International Network of Urban Language Studies). INULS was established in 2008 with the support of the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in the Netherlands and CCLASS(Nanjing University).
　In 2003, the Institute of Sociolinguistics of Nanjing University, which was established by Professor Daeming Xu, held the Urban Language Seminars (ULS) every year. So far, ULS have been held in China, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and other countries and regions. After being registered as an international society by the Macau government, annual conferences have been held at the University of Macau, Shaanxi Normal University, Oita University, Nanjing University, and Southeast University (Nanjing).