Invited Speakers

Mayamin Altae
Dr. Mayamin Altae has more than 20 years of professional experience in teaching and researching in the higher education sectors in the UK and the Middle East & North Africa (MENA). Dr. Mayamin has been advocating for the embedding of technology in the teaching practices at both the university and the school levels and she has designed and delivered educational technology projects in the UK, Japan, Kazakhstan, Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the UAE. Dr. Mayamin is also a member of highly prestigious educational research associations in the UK. Dr. Mayamin is currently advising government departments and associations across the Middle East on supporting the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (2030), mainly Goal 4 Quality Education.
Dr. Mayamin holds a PhD from The University of Leicester in Education, an MA in Educational Technology from The University of Manchester and a BA in English Language and Literature & Qualified UK Teacher Status (QTS) from Bradford University. She also holds a Qualified FE Teacher Training and Skills Status (QTLS) from Calderdale College in West Yorkshire, UK.

Jozefina Komporaly
She is a London-based theatre scholar, academic and translator from Romanian and Hungarian into English, specializing in drama and contemporary literature. Her translations, showcasing the work of authors such as Andrea Tompa, András Visky, Árpád Kun, Béla Markó, Cristian Fulaş, Matéi Visniec, Mihaela Miroiu, Tatiana Ţîbuleac, appeared in Asymptote, Baffler, Columbia Journal, Hungarian Literature Online, Los Angeles Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poet Lore, The Continental, Words without Borders, World Literature Today. She is editor and co-translator of the collections How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients and Other Plays (Seagull, 2015) and András Visky's Barrack Dramaturgy (Intellect, 2017), and author of numerous publications on translation, adaptation and theatre including Radical Revival as Adaptation (Palgrave, 2017). Her translations were produced by Foreign Affairs, Trap Door, Theatre Y, Trafika Europe, and recently published volumes include Mr K Released by Matéi Visniec (finalist for the 2021 EBRD Literature Prize); Plays from Romania: Dramaturgies of Subversion (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Story of a Stammer by Gábor Vida (Seagull Books, 2022). Her forthcoming translation Home by Andrea Tompa (Istros Books, 2024) was the recipient of a PEN Translates Grant. She is a member of the UK Translators Association and, on the academic front, she is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Research at the School of Performance, Wimbledon College of Arts, University of the Arts London, and has also taught translation practice at the University of Cardiff.

CECILIA MIHAELA POPESCU
She is a Full Professor in Applied Romance Linguistics, General Linguistics, and Pragmatics at the University of Craiova, Romania. She received her PhD in 2006, in the field of Philology (Romance Linguistics subdomain), at the same academic institution, under the supervision of Prof. Maria Iliescu. Her research activity is structured around four major topics, which are somehow complementary to each other and which relate to: a) furthering the studies on Latin linguistics issues, b) studying the semantic-functional behavior of certain verbal compartments (future, subjunctive, conditional, presumptive) in Romance languages viewed in synchronicity, diachrony, but also in contrast, c) analyzing lexical borrowings from French to Romanian, d) studying discursive markers in Romance languages. In 2013, she published her postdoctoral thesis entitled The Future and the Conditional in Romance Languages. A Morphosyntactic and Semantic Approach from a Diachronic Perspective. She also published papers in Studii şi cercetări lingvistice, Revue roumaine de linguistique, Revue de Linguistique Romane, Zeitschrift fur Franzosische Sprache und Literatur, Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique and Discours. Revue de linguistique, psycholinguistique et informatique etc., as well as other international peer-reviewed volumes. From 2016 up to 2022, she was selected member in the Board of the International Society of Romance Linguistics (Société de Linguistique romane).

Teodora Popescu
Full Professor, Ph.Ed., Habil.Phil.
1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba-Iulia, Romania
Email address: tpopescu@uab.ro
ORCID: 0000-0001-6933-623X
Teodora Popescu, Doctor of Education (2004), teaches English Semantics, Translation Studies and Intercultural Business Communication. She is the author of English-Romanian dictionary of business terminology (2017), The Business English language curriculum (2017) and co-author of Dictionary of business collocations. With Romanian translation and practice section (2009); Mic dicţionar englez-german-francez-italian-român de termeni economici, juridici şi politici (2006); She has also (co)-authored 90 articles in the field of ELT methodology, curriculum studies, CALL, lexical semantics and intercultural business communication. Teodora Popescu is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education - JoLIE, 1 Decembrie 1918 University of Alba Iulia, Romania. She has co-chaired conferences in Linguistic and Intercultural Education and Internationalisation of Higher Education.

José Damián GONZÁLEZ-BARROS Y GONZÁLEZ
Head of the Romanian Language Department (2012-2021) and Romanian Teacher (1986-2021) within “Jesús Maestro” Official Language School, Madrid, Spain, a sworn translator of Romanian (1985-present) and a freelancer translator. He has a B.A. in Romance Languages (Faculty of Languages, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain, Romance languages and literature) and a B.A. in Modern Languages (Faculty of Languages, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain, Italian language and literature), speaking eight languages: Spanish, Romanian, Dutch, Portuguese, English, French, Hebrew and Finnish.
His professional experience and research activity cover more than 35 years of teaching, translating, creating and assessing examinations of Romanian as a foreign language from A1 to C1 and creating examinations for testing translation abilities of future sworn translators from Romanian to Spanish and from Spanish to Romanian, publishing specialized books, journal and international conferences/congresses articles in the field of Romanian as a foreign language (selected books and articles: “Esquemas de Rumano. Gramática y usos lingüísticos” (Romanian language worksheets. Grammar and linguistic uses), Centro de Lingüística Aplicada Atenea, Madrid, 2015. (Third press edition), Jean Bart, “Európolis” (translation from Romanian into Spanish with Senina Mihăilescu) Miraguano Publishing House (Colección Amura), Madrid, Spain, 1993, “Recapitularea morfologiei și a lexicului și achiziția citirii expresive prin utilizarea textului teatral la orele de RLS” (Recapitulation of morphology and lexicon and the acquisition of expressive reading through the use of theatrical text in Romanian as a foreign language) presented in the international congress „Polifonii literare - confluența universului artistic și didactic” (Literary polyphonies - the confluence of the artistic and didactic universe) Biblioteca de Arte „Tudor Arghezi”, Liceul Teoretic „Rambam”, September 8, 2022, Chișinău, Moldova, Conference. Key note speaker. “Utilizarea documentelor autentice la cursurile de RLS: câteva exemple de la A1 la C1” (Using authentic materials in teaching Romanian as a Foreign Language: some examples from A1 to C1) presented in the international congress „Provocări contemporane în învățarea limbii române ca L2/L3 și ca limbă minoritară” (Contemporary challenges in learning Romanian as L2/L3 and as a minority language) Centrul lingvistic „Limba Noastră”, Facultatea Transfrontalieră a Universității „Dunărea de Jos” din Galați, June 4-6, 2021, Galați, Romania, Speech: “Cursuri de RLS în modalitate hibridă: câteva impresii/concluzii” (Courses of Romanian as a foreign language in hybrid learning: some impressions/conclussions) presented in the international congress “Simpozionul internațional Româna ca Limbă Străină, Ediția a 2-a: „Un Cosmos Cultural în Multe Culori” (Romanian as a Foreign Language, 2nd Edition: “A Cultural Cosmos in Many Colors”) Democritus University of Thrace, ILR Lecturer of Romanian Language, Culture and Civilization, Department of Language, Literature and Culture of Black Sea Countries, May 21-22, 2021 Komotini, Greece, 2019 : Speech “Utilizarea documentelor autentice la cursurile de RLS: câteva exemple” (Using authentic materials in teaching Romanian as a foreign language: some examples) presented at the international congress „Discurs polifonic în RLS” (Polyphonic discourse in Romanian as a foreign language) Department of Romanian Language, Culture and Civilization, Faculty of Letters, “Babeș-Bolyai” University, October 18-19, 2019, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Conference “Dificultăți pe care le întâmpină studenții spanioli care învață limba românâ” (Difficulties Spanish students encounter when learning Romanian) presented in the opening session of the international congress “40 de ani de limba română ca limba străină la UBB. 1974-2014” (40 years of teaching Romanian as a foreign language in „Babeș-Bolyai” University. 1974-2014), Department of Romanian Language, Culture and Civilization, Faculty of Letters, “Babeș-Bolyai” University, October 3-4, 2014, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. email: valldelsbrucs@gmail.com

Nicolae Şera
Associate Professor, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Department of Modern Languages and Business Communication within The Faculty of Economics and Business Administration. He obtained his PhD in Philology in 2004 and has been teaching Business French and Intercultural Business Communication in French. He published at Editions Universitaires Européennes Écriture diurne et nocturne dans l’œuvre de Mircea Eliade (2010) and Sur le baroque encore…Ancora sul barocco (2011). In 2022 he published at Editura Cartea Cartii de Stiinta the volume about Pascal Quignardțs work entitled: Pascal Quignard – l’appel des litterae. He has authored several articles about Pascal Quignard’s work which have been published in Lingua. Language and Culture journal and other journals from Romania and France. He has also published several articles in the following fields : discourse analysis, XVIIth century and contemporary French literature, intercultural communication. In 2019 he taught intercultural communication at Cadi Ayyad University from Marrakech, Marocco as Erasmus scholar.
He is a member of Mircea Eliade International Society (Melbourne, Australia) and he was the Romanian director of Confucius Institute UBB Cluj-Napoca between 2012 - 2021.