Sophia Smith Galer In Conversation

Join Blackwell’s Manchester for a conversation with Sophia Smith Galer and Rob Drummond on the power, politics and preservation of language, centred on Smith Galer’s book How To Kill a Language: Power, Resistance and the Race to Save Our Words.

The book explores the global crisis of language loss, tracing how thousands of languages face extinction and what is lost culturally, politically and personally when a language dies. Smith Galer travels from Italy to Ghana, Greece, Ukraine and Ecuador, examining both the forces driving language death—war, climate crisis, nationalism—and the communities fighting to revive and sustain their languages, from Kurdish activists in Iran to Karuk speakers in California.

How To Kill a Language combines investigative journalism, personal narrative and cultural insight, revealing the stakes of linguistic disappearance while offering hope through stories of resilience, activism and intergenerational transmission.

Sophia Smith Galer is an award-winning journalist, author and content creator whose work spans language, culture and technology. Recognised internationally for innovation in journalism, she has contributed to the BBC, VICE News and The Guardian, created viral educational content on TikTok, and founded initiatives supporting language awareness and media innovation.