Chapter 10

Engaging with professional organizations

In this article I argue that contributing to professional organizations is a particularly beneficial way of finding personal and professional enrichment and opportunities for creative and meaningful engagement toward addressing language-related societal issues. Such an engagement can continue to shape, often in unexpected but deeply rewarding ways, one’s identity in applied linguistics over an entire professional career. I exemplify this position by tracing my own involvement with five professional organizations, in each case asking three interwoven questions: What were the language-focused societal – the ‘real world’ – issues as I perceived them at the time when I was most deeply involved with them? What focused projects and opportunities for enlarging my understanding of the field presented themselves? And what were the long-term lessons that I took away from the experience?