Invited Speakers

Prof. Reima Al-Jarf has taught ESL, ESP, linguistics and translation at King Saud University, for 26 years. She has 700 publications and conference presentations in 70 countries. She reviewed Ph.D. theses, promotion works, conference and grant proposals, and articles for numerous peer-reviewed international journals including some ISI and Scopus journals. Her areas of interest are: Foreign language teaching and learning, technology integration in education and translation studies.

Will Baker is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Centre for Global Englishes at the University of Southampton, UK. His research interests are Intercultural and Transcultural Communication, English as a Lingua Franca, English medium instruction, Intercultural education, Intercultural Citizenship and ELT, and he has published and presented internationally in all these areas. His current research is investigating the role of English and English language teaching in relation to processes of dis/empowerment, access to higher education, and the development of global citizenship in five linguistically and culturally diverse settings (Colombia, Mexico, Iraq, Thailand, Vietnam) where the importance of English has grown significantly. Recent publications include Baker, W., & Ishikawa, T. Transcultural Communication and Global Englishes: Exploring intercultural communication through English in a multilingual world (In press, Routledge), co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca (2018), author of the monograph Culture and Identity through English as a Lingua Franca (DGM 2015), and co-editor of the book series Developments in English as Lingua Franca (DGM) and Cambridge Elements in Intercultural Communication (Cambridge University Press).

Richard Hibbitt is Senior Lecturer in French and Comparative Literature at the University of Leeds, where he co-directs the Centre for World Literatures. His research interests are in aesthetics, poetics and cultural exchange, with a particular interest in the long nineteenth century. His publications include Dilettantism and its Values: From Weimar Classicism to the Fin de Siècle (2006), Saturn's Moons: W. G. Sebald - A Handbook (co-edited with Jo Catling, 2011), and the edited volume Other Capitals of the Nineteenth Century: An Alternative Mapping of Literary and Cultural Space (2017). Current projects include Two Sides of the Straits: An Anthology of Gallipoli Poems in English and Turkish, co-edited with Berkan Ulu (forthcoming with White Rose University Press) and Literary Capitals in the Long Nineteenth Century: Spaces Beyond the Centres, co-edited with Arunima Bhattacharya and Laura Scuriatti (forthcoming with Palgrave). He is a member of the Writing 1900 research group and sits on the executive committees of the British Comparative Literature Association and the European Society of Comparative Literature.

Duncan Large is Academic Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. He is Professor of European Literature and Translation at UEA, and Chairman of the PETRA-E Network of European literary translation training institutions. He taught previously at the Universities of Oxford, Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle), Dublin (Trinity College) and Swansea. Prof. Large researches widely in modern German literature and thought (especially the work of Friedrich Nietzsche), in translation studies and comparative literature. He is Co-Editor of the new monograph series Routledge Studies in Literary Translation and a General Editor of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Stanford University Press). His latest book publications are the co-edited volumes Untranslatability: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Routledge, 2018) and Nietzsche’s “Ecce Homo” (De Gruyter, 2021).

Roberto Merlo is Associate Professor of Romanian Language and Literature at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and Modern Cultures of Turin University, Italy. He is Secretary of the Italian Association of Romanian Studies (AIR) and member in several editorial/scientific boards of international journals and conferences devoted to Romanian Studies. His main research fields are the history of Romanian literary culture and the history of the Romanian language. His linguistic research is primarily focused on the contact between Romanian and other languages, both from a historical perspective (Proto-Slavic and other South-Eastern European languages) and also in the present (Italian, in the context of post-89 migrations). In the literary field, he took a special interest in the literary reflections of Romania’s national identity construction in the late 19th-early 20th century (Il mito dacico nella letteratura romena dell’Ottocento, Edizioni dell’Orso, 2011), as well as in the poetics of modernity in George Bacovia’ oeuvre. His studies have been published in many international scientific volumes and journals. He translated from Romanian into Italian contemporary fiction, poetry and plays, as well as academic studies.

Elena Platon, Ph.D, is an Associate Professor within The Department of Romanian language, Culture and Civilisation of the Faculty of Letters, Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. Her areas of interest are Romanian as a foreign language (see Manual de limba română ca limbă străină. A1, A2, Cluj-Napoca, 2012) but also ethnology and anthropology, more precisely aspects regarding the mentality of archaic and traditional Romanian societies (Frăția de cruce, Cluj-Napoca, 2000, or Biserica mișcătoare, Cluj-Napoca, 2006). She also conducts research in the field of Romanian language acquisition as a foreign language, her best known publications being Descrierea minimală a limbii române (2014), Manual de limba română ca limbă străină. A1, A2 (2012, co-author), but also a whole series of Romanian language textbooks and didactic films for children belonging to national minorities. Between 2010-2015, dr. Platon was the director of two European POSDRU projects, in which she monitored the training of over 4000 teachers of Romanian as a non-native language (RLNM) in pre-university education and coordinated the elaboration of twelve volumes of RLNM didactics. During the past three years, Elena Platon coordinated the volume Patrimoniu și imaginar lingvistic românesc (Polirom, 2020), part of the wider project Enciclopedia imaginariilor din România (Polirom, 2020), where she published a theoretical study on the linguistic imaginary and an encyclopedic study on the linguistic foundations of folklore. She is a member of the editorial team of the Dacoromania magazine.

Silvia-Emilia Plăcintar is Associate Professor of English at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of Babeş-Bolyai University. She has taught on EAP pre-sessional programmes at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research interests focus on linguistic pragmatics, conversation analysis, intercultural politeness, business discourse and intercultural communication. Her latest book is Studies in Cross-Cultural Business Communication.

Professor Fiona Sampson MBE FRSL is a leading British poet and writer, published in thirty-eight languages, who has received international awards in the US, India, Macedonia, Albania and Bosnia. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, of the English Association and of the Wordsworth Trust, she’s published twenty-seven books and received an MBE for Services to Literature.She has served on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature and is a Trustee of the Royal Literary Fund. Other honours include the Newdigate Prize, Cholmondeley Prize, Hawthornden Fellowship, and awards from the Arts Councils of England and of Wales, Society of Authors, Poetry Book Society and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, as well as various Book of the Year selections. She recently received two major European prizes, the 2019 Naim Frashëri Laureateship of Albania and Macedonia, and the 2020 European Lyric Atlas Prize, Bosnia. She’s also a broadcaster and newspaper critic, librettist and literary translator, and was editor of Poetry Review 2005-12. Her internationally acclaimed In Search of Mary Shelley was shortlisted for the Biographers Club Slightly Foxed Prize. And Two Way Mirror, her biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, has just appeared to critical acclaim.

Dr. Abdelaziz Zohri is an Associate professor of Business English and research methodology at the National School of Business and Management (ENCG), university Hassan I. He holds a PhD degree in EFL and the evaluation of education systems and a Master degree in Applied Linguistics from University Mohammed V, Faculty of Education Sciences in Rabat. He also taught English in high schools and prep. classes for more than 12 years. He is the co-founder of Africa Voices Dialogue: a space for African educators and all education stakeholders to be seen, heard and loved.
Dr. Abdelaziz Zohri has also gotten a European degree in coaching and professional development from La Haute Ecole de Coaching de Paris. His doctoral thesis focused on the social psychology of university EFL learners’ success, failure and dropout. He has published research papers in cognitive psychology, learners’ motivation and critical thinking skills. He has participated as a speaker in many conferences in Morocco and abroad and given presentations in various fields such as independent & autonomous learning, teaching thinking skills & creativity and promoting risk taking in future entrepreneurs.