Joint Call for Tutorial Proposals for NAACL/ACL/EMNLP 2025

The North American Chapter of the ACL - Human Language Technologies (NAACL-HLT), the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), and the Conference on Empirical Methods in
Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) invite proposals for tutorials in conjunction with NAACL-HLT 2025, ACL 2025, and EMNLP 2025 conferences. We seek proposals in all areas of computational linguistics (CL) / natural language processing (NLP), broadly conceived to include related disciplines. We invite proposals for two types of tutorials:
1. Cutting-edge in CL / NLP: Tutorials that cover advances in newly emerging areas not previously covered in any EACL/NAACL-HLT/ACL/EMNLP related tutorial (see the list of tutorials in the past 9 years), or
2. Introductory to fields related to CL / NLP: Tutorials that provide introductions to related fields that are potentially relevant for the CL / NLP community (e.g., linguistics, bioinformatics, machine learning techniques, human-computer interaction, large language models for non-English languages, etc.).

In both cases, the aim of a tutorial is primarily to help CL/NLP researchers to understand a scientific problem, its tractability, and its theoretical and practical implications. Presentations of particular technological solutions or systems are welcome, provided that they serve as illustrations of broader scientific considerations.

Tutorials will be held at one of the following conference venues:
● NAACL-HLT 2025: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA on April 29 - May 4, 2025
● ACL 2025: Vienna, Austria on July 27 - August 1, 2025
● EMNLP 2025: Location TBD, late in 2025

Important Dates

NAACL-HLT/ACL/EMNLP 2025 shared dates:
Proposal submission deadline October 22, 2024
Notification of acceptance November 22, 2024

All deadlines are 11:59PM UTC-12:00 (“anywhere on Earth”).

Fee Waivers

Up to 3 instructors per tutorial can have their registration fees waived for the main conference and any subset of co-located tutorials and workshops.

Diversity & Inclusion

To foster an inclusive culture in our field, we particularly encourage submissions from members of underrepresented groups in CL/NLP, i.e., researchers from any demographic or geographic minority, researchers with disabilities, among others. The overall diversity of the tutorial organizers and potential audience will be taken into account to ensure that the conference program is varied and balanced.
Tutorial proposals should describe and will be evaluated according to how the tutorial contributes to topics promoting diversity (e.g., working on minority languages or groups), participation diversity (e.g., coordinating with social affinity groups, providing subsidies, making a promotional plan for the tutorial), and representation diversity among tutorial presenters. For more information or advice, organizers may consult resources such as the BIG directory, Black in AI, Disability in AI, Indigenous AI, LatinX in AI, Masakhane, 500 Queer Scientists, and Women-in-ML’s directory.

Submission Details

Proposals should use the ACL paper submission format. Authors can download the LaTeX or Word template or use the Overleaf template. Proposals should not exceed 4 pages of content (plus one page for tutor biographies and unlimited pages for references), should be submitted as PDF documents, and should contain the following:
1. A title and authors, affiliations, and contact information.
2. A brief description of the tutorial content and its relevance to the CL / NLP community.
3. Type of the tutorial: “cutting-edge in CL / NLP” vs ”introductory to fields related to CL/NLP”.
4. Briefly describe the target audience and any expected prerequisites for the attendees, for example:
○ Math: e.g., “Understand derivatives and integrals as found in introductory calculus”
○ Linguistics: e.g., “Be able to parse and generate text with dependency grammars”
○ Machine Learning: e.g., “Understand ‘classical’ supervised methods such as SVM and perceptron”
○ Neural Network: e.g., “Familiarity with transformers”
○ Programming or other tools: e.g., “Knowledge of Pytorch and Unix command line tools”
5. An outline of the tutorial structure and content and how it will be covered in a three-hour slot. In exceptional cases, six-hour tutorial slots are available. These time limits do not include coffee breaks, e.g., a three-hour tutorial in fact occupies a 3.5-hour slot, and a six-hour tutorial occupies a 7-hour slot.
6. Explain how the tutorial includes other people’s work. We recommend that the tutorial covers work by the presenters as well as by other researchers. The submission should explain how this breadth is ensured. Tutorials should not be “self-invited talks”.
7. Diversity considerations, e.g., use of multilingual data, indications of how the described methods scale up to various languages or domains, participation of both senior and junior instructors, demographic and geographical diversity of the instructors, plans for how to diversify audience participation, etc.
8. Reading list. Work that you expect the audience to read before the tutorial can be indicated by an asterisk. Recommended papers should provide breadth of authorship and include work by other authors as well as work from other disciplines is welcomed if relevant.
9. For each tutorial presenter, a one-paragraph statement of their research interests and areas of expertise for the tutorial topic, as well as experience in instructing an international audience.
10. An estimate of the audience size for the tutorial. If the same or a similar tutorial (or workshops, talks, etc.) has been given before, include information on where any previous version of the tutorial was given and how many attendees the tutorial attracted.
11. A note specifying which venue(s) (NAACL-HLT/ACL/EMNLP) would be acceptable and/or preferable. Include a description of any constraints that might make the tutorial compatible with only one of these events, logistically, thematically, or otherwise.
12. A description of special requirements for technical equipment.
13. We intend to make tutorial presentation materials publicly available (e.g., tutorial slides, captioned video recording, as well as software, data, or other resources as applicable) in the ACL Anthology. If any of your tutorial materials cannot be shared, please explain why this is the case.
14. An ethics statement that discusses the ethical considerations related to the topics of the tutorial.
15. OPTIONAL: We welcome proposals on special conference themes. If your tutorial proposal aligns with the special theme of a conference, then please explain why this is the case.
16. OPTIONAL: We invite tutorial instructors to include pedagogical material that the audience can bring into classrooms or similar spaces of discussion, to bring attention to the tutorial topic (e.g., a hands-on exercise, discussion questions, a demo, or an assignment). If you would like to provide this, then please explain why this is the case.
Tutorial proposals should be submitted online using the softconf system at the following link: https://softconf.com/p/acl-tutorials2025. Proposals will be reviewed jointly by the Tutorial Co-Chairs of the conferences and optionally by a group of external experts.

Evaluation Criteria

Each tutorial proposal will be evaluated according to its clarity and preparedness, novelty or timely character of the topic, instructors’ experience, target audience, open access of the tutorial instructional material, and diversity and inclusion.

Instructor Responsibilities

Tutorial decisions along with reviews will be released by Nov 22, 2024. Accepted tutorial proposers must then provide abstracts for inclusion in the conference registration material by the specific conference deadlines. The description should be in two formats: (a) an ASCII version that can be included in email announcements and published on the conference website, and (b) a PDF version for inclusion in the electronic proceedings (detailed instructions will be provided). Tutorial speakers must provide tutorial materials (e.g., slides, relevant list of papers) at least one month prior to the start date of the hosting conference. The final submitted tutorial materials must minimally include copies of the course slides and a bibliography for the material covered in the tutorial. After the conference, the presenters will be invited to update their slides in the ACL Anthology (if needed).

Tutorial Chairs

NAACL 2025:
● Maria Lomeli, Meta
● Swabha Swayamdipta, University of South California
● Rui Zhang, Penn State University

ACL 2025:
● Yuki Arase, Tokyo Institute of Technology
● David Jurgens, University of Michigan
● Fei Xia, University of Washington

EMNLP 2025: TBA
If you have any questions related to tutorial proposals, you can reach us at naacl_acl_emnlp2025_tutorial_chairs@googlegroups.com.