The Department of English Language and Literature at Sultan Qaboos University concluded its 4^th International Conference on Language, Linguistics, Literature and Translation on Saturday, 8 February 2020. On the theme of ‘Exploring Cultural Intersections’, the conference brought together scholars, researchers and practitioners in the four areas from different countries. As many as 90 papers were presented to an audience of more than 200 people from 25 countries.

The conference featured the following three renowned keynote speakers:

• Professor David Damrosch, Harvard University, USA, Literature
• Professor Reem Basyouni, American University in Cairo, Egypt, Linguistics
• Professor Alister Cumming, Emeritus Professor, University of Toronto, Canada, Language.

The conference sessions were very instructive and very well attended. In some sessions, there was not enough space to accommodate the attendees. The findings shared in these sessions were insightful, informative, intriguing and original.

The conference had a final panel discussion and one of the questions was: “has the conference been successful in achieving its objective of exploring ways in which cultural intersections can be conceptualized, critiqued, disrupted and eventually reconstructed? If yes to what extent?’

The panel of the keynote speakers responded to this question by stating that based on the many presentations they attended across the different themes of the conference, they believe the conference has been very successful in exploring this important area of inquiry. The panel as well as the audience emphasized that the conference has touched upon a crucial area and that the research findings shared in the conference are promising and will add substantially to knowledge in these four areas. Conference participants thanked Sultan Qaboos University and the Department of English Language for organizing this conference and commended the good organization and praised Omani hospitality.  The participants praised the wide scope of the conference in covering the cultural intersections between the four areas of language, linguistics, literature and translation. They also appreciated the depth of the keynote speeches and the parallel sessions.

The conference reached the following recommendations:

1. More conferences of this kind should be organized
2. The conference proceedings need to be published as soon as possible to make these research findings accessible to all those who are interested.
3. Oman seems to be an ideal location for a conference of this nature, given its rich cultural and linguistic heritage.
4. The Department of English Language and Literature should continue organizing these conferences.
5. More focus needs to be given to interdisciplinary studies to explore the areas of common interest between language, linguistics, literature and translation.
6. Oman has a very rich cultural heritage and this needs to be explored more and shared with the world.