IAFOR > The European Conference on Language Learning (ECLL) > ECLL2024 > Speakers

Speakers

The 11th European Conference on Language Learning (ECLL2023) is a multidisciplinary conference held concurrently with The 11th European Conference on Education (ECE2023). Keynote, Featured and Spotlight Speakers will provide a variety of perspectives from different academic and professional backgrounds. Registration for either conference will allow participants to attend sessions in both.

This page provides information about presenters. For details of presentations and other programming, please visit the Programme page.

  • Grant Black
    Grant Black
    Chuo University, Japan
  • Anne Boddington
    Anne Boddington
    Kingston University, UK
  • Praminda Caleb-Solly
    Praminda Caleb-Solly
    University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
  • Evangelia Chrysikou
    Evangelia Chrysikou
    University College London, UK
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Alfonso J. García-Osuna
    Alfonso J. García-Osuna
    Hofstra University, United States
  • Donald E. Hall
    Donald E. Hall
    Binghamton University, United States
  • Brendan Howe
    Brendan Howe
    Ewha Womans University, South Korea
  • David Mallows
    David Mallows
    UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom
  • Ljiljana Marković
    Ljiljana Marković
    European Centre for Peace and Development (ECPD), United Nations’ University for Peace
  • James W. McNally
    James W. McNally
    University of Michigan & NACDA Program on Aging, United States
  • Cian O’Donovan
    Cian O’Donovan
    University College London (UCL), United Kingdom
  • Neelam Raina
    Neelam Raina
    Middlesex University, United Kingdom
  • Ana Pellicer-Sánchez
    Ana Pellicer-Sánchez
    UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom
  • Marcelo Staricoff
    Marcelo Staricoff
    University of Sussex, United Kingdom

Become a Speaker

Excellent plenary speakers are central to our conferences, ensuring that timely, innovative and engaging content is presented to our audiences around the world. If you would like to be considered for a speaking slot at one of our conferences, please apply below.

Apply to Speak

Previous Speakers

View details of speakers at past ECLL conferences via the links below.

ECLL2022 ECLL2021 ECLL2020
ECLL2019 ECLL2018 ECLL2017
ECLL2016 ECLL2015 ECLL2014
ECLL2013
Grant Black
Chuo University, Japan

Biography

Professor Grant Black is a professor in the Faculty of Commerce at Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan, where he has taught Global Skills and Global Issues since 2013. Grant is engaged in diverse roles as a global manager, systems builder, executive leader and university professor. His research and teaching areas include global management skills, intercultural intelligence (CQ) and organisational management. He also has taught Japanese Management Theory at J. F. Oberlin University (Japan), and a continuing education course in the Foundations of Japanese Zen Buddhism at Temple University Japan. Previously, he was Chair of the English Section at the Center for Education of Global Communication at the University of Tsukuba where he served in a six-year post in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. He holds a BA Highest Honors in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara; an MA in Japanese Buddhist Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles; and a Doctor of Social Science (DSocSci) from the Department of Management in the School of Business at the University of Leicester. Dr Black is a Chartered Manager (CMgr), the highest status that can be achieved in the management profession in the UK. In 2018, he was elected a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute (FCMI) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). Grant is President of Black Inc. Consulting (Japan), a Tokyo-based firm specialising in international and intercultural project management, communication projects, and executive leadership and training. He is the director of the Nippon Academic Management Institute (NAMI) and the author of Education Reform Policy at a Japanese Super Global University: Policy Translation, Migration and Mutation (Routledge, 2022). He serves as a Vice-President for the International Academic Forum (IAFOR).

Special Seminar Session (2024) | An Introduction to the IAFOR Undergraduate Research Symposium (IURS)
Featured Interview (2021) | Undergraduate Research: Nurturing the Next Generation
Anne Boddington
Kingston University, UK

Biography

Anne Boddington is Professor of Design Innovation, Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, Business and Innovation at Kingston University in the UK and recently appointed as the Sub Panel Chair for Art & Design: History, Practice & Theory for the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021. Professor Boddington has extensive experience of the leadership, management and evaluation of art and design education and art and design research in higher education across the UK and internationally. She is an experienced chair and has held trustee and governance roles across the creative and cultural sector including as trustee of the Design Council, an independent Governor, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), an affiliate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), a member of the executive of the Council for Higher Education in Art & Design (CHEAD) and a member of the advisory board of the Arts & Humanities Research Council. She has an international reputation in creative education and research and has been a partner, a collaborator, a reviewer and evaluator for a wide range of international projects and reviews across different nations in Europe, the Middle East, Southern and east Asia and North America.

Previous Presentations

Plenary Panel (2020) | Embracing Difference? Adaptive Lifelong Learning
Plenary Panel I (2017) | Think Like a System, Act Like an Entrepreneur
Praminda Caleb-Solly
University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

Biography

Praminda Caleb-Solly is Professor of Embodied Intelligence at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, where she leads the Cyber-physical Health and Assistive Robotics Technologies research group. She holds degrees in Electronic Systems Engineering, Biomedical Instrumentation Engineering, and a PhD in Interactive Evolutionary Computation. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Head of Electronics and Computer Systems at Designability, an assistive technology SME. In 2020, she co-founded Robotics for Good CIC, a start-up to enable deployment of leading-edge intelligent robotics and smart technology solutions that seek to empower people in their everyday lives.

Professor Caleb-Solly’s academic publications cover machine learning and human-robot interaction. She also co-authored the UK-Robotics and Autonomous Systems White Paper on Robotics in Social Care: A Connected Care EcoSystem for Independent Living; and gave evidence to the UK House of Lords’ Science and Technology Committee inquiry into Ageing: Science, Technology and Healthy Living. She is currently leading an EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Network, Facilitating the Emergence of Healthcare Robots from Labs into Service, and also serves as a member of the British Standards Institute’s Technical Committees on Service Robot Safety and Ethics.

Keynote Presentation (2024) | Helping Us to Help Ourselves – How Assistive Robots and AI Can Change the Dynamics of Supporting Healthy Ageing and Social Care
Evangelia Chrysikou
University College London, UK

Biography

Dr Evangelia Chrysikou is a registered architect and senior research fellow at UCL. She owns the award-winning SynThesis Architects (London – Athens), that specialises in medical facilities. Her work received prestigious awards (Singapore 2009, Kuala Lumpur 2012, Brisbane 2013, Birmingham 2014, London 2014). Parallel activities include teaching at medical and architectural schools, research (UK, France, Belgium, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Greece and the Middle East) and advisory. She advised the Hellenic Secretary of Health and is the author of the new national guidelines for mental health facilities. Dr Chrysikou is the author of the book ‘Architecture for Psychiatric Environments and Therapeutic Spaces’, healthcare architecture editor, reviewer, active member of several professional and scientific associations and a TED-MED speaker. She is a Trustee, Member of the Board and Director of Research at DIMHN (UK) and Member of the Board at the Scholar’s Association Onassis Foundation.

Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s global business and academic operations.

Dr Haldane’s research and teaching is on history, politics, international affairs and international education, as well as governance and decision making, and he is a Member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for Global Governance. Since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course, and, since 2017, Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within the University.

In 2020 Dr Haldane was appointed Honorary Professor of UCL (University College London), through the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction. He holds Visiting Professorships in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, and at the Doshisha Business School in Kyoto, where he teaches Ethics and Governance on the MBA, and is a member of the Value Research Center. He is also a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa.

Professor Haldane has given invited lectures and presentations to universities and conferences globally, including at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and advised universities, NGOs and governments on issues relating to international education policy, public-private partnerships, and multi-stakeholder forums. He was the project lead on the 2019 Kansai Resilience Forum, held by the Japanese Government through the Prime Minister’s and Cabinet Office, and oversaw the 2021 Ministry of Foreign Affairs commissioned study on Infectious Diseases on Cruise Ships.

Dr Haldane has a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the Université Paris-Est Créteil, Sciences Po Paris, and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business, as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas, and the schools of Journalism at both Sciences Po Paris, and Moscow State University.

From 2012-2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu), and since 2015 has been a Trustee of HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012 and the Royal Society of Arts in 2015. He lives in Japan and holds a black belt in Judo.

Previous Presentations

Featured Interview (2021) | A Life in Language: Lessons in Language and Language Learning
Panel Presentation (2020) | Embracing Difference? Adaptive Lifelong Learning
Panel Presentation (2020) | That's NOT Online Learning!: The Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learning
Alfonso J. García-Osuna
Hofstra University, United States

Biography

Alfonso J. García-Osuna has taught at Hofstra University and at City University of NY-Kingsborough for over 35 years. He specialises in mediaeval and early modern literature, receiving his PhD (1989) from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He has completed postdoctoral work at the University of Valladolid, Spain, has published six books, and is a frequent contributor to specialised journals. Additionally, Dr García-Osuna is the editor of the IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities.

Alfonso received primary and secondary education in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, the place where his family originated and where he grew up. An avid cyclist, he has completed the Road to Santiago, an 867-kilometre route through northern Spain, eight times.

Keynote Presentation (2024) | Humanities at the Helm: Mobilising Scholars to Confront the Planetary Climate Crisis
Donald E. Hall
Binghamton University, United States

Biography

Donald E. Hall is Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Binghamton University (SUNY), USA. He was formerly Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester, USA, and held a previous position as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Provost Hall has published widely in the fields of British Studies, Gender Theory, Cultural Studies, and Professional Studies. Over the course of his career, he served as Jackson Distinguished Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English (and previously Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages) at West Virginia University. Before that, he was Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at California State University, Northridge, where he taught for 13 years. He is a recipient of the University Distinguished Teaching Award at CSUN, was a visiting professor at the National University of Rwanda, was Lansdowne Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria (Canada), was Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Studies at Karl Franzens University in Graz, Austria, and was Fulbright Specialist at the University of Helsinki. He has also taught in Sweden, Romania, Hungary, and China. He served on numerous panels and committees for the Modern Language Association (MLA), including the Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion, and the Convention Program Committee. In 2012, he served as national President of the Association of Departments of English. From 2013-2017, he served on the Executive Council of the MLA.

His current and forthcoming work examines issues such as professional responsibility and academic community-building, the dialogics of social change and activist intellectualism, and the Victorian (and our continuing) interest in the deployment of instrumental agency over our social, vocational, and sexual selves. Among his many books and editions are the influential faculty development guides, The Academic Self and The Academic Community, both published by Ohio State University Press. Subjectivities and Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and The Future of Queer Studies were both published by Routledge Press. Most recently he and Annamarie Jagose, of the University of Auckland, co-edited a volume titled The Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Though he is a full-time administrator, he continues to lecture worldwide on the value of a liberal arts education and the need for nurturing global competencies in students and interdisciplinary dialogue in and beyond the classroom.

Professor Donald E. Hall is a Vice-President of the IAFOR Academic Governing Board.

Keynote Presentation (2024) | The Work of the University in Perilous Times
Brendan Howe
Ewha Womans University, South Korea

Biography

Brendan Howe is Dean and Professor of the Graduate School of International Studies, Ewha Womans University, South Korea, where he has also served two terms as Associate Dean and Department Chair. He is also currently the President of the Asian Political and International Studies Association, and an Honorary Ambassador of Public Diplomacy and advisor for the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has held visiting professorships and research fellowships at the East-West Center (where he is currently enjoying a second term as a POSCO Visiting Research Fellow), the Freie Universität Berlin, De La Salle University, the University of Sydney, Korea National Defence University, Georgetown University, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, and Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Educated at the University of Oxford, the University of Kent at Canterbury, Trinity College Dublin, and Georgetown University, his ongoing research agendas focus on traditional and non-traditional security in East Asia, human security, middle powers, public diplomacy, post-crisis development, comprehensive peacebuilding and conflict transformation. He has authored, co-authored, or edited around 100 related publications including Society and Democracy in South Korea and Indonesia (Palgrave, 2022), The Niche Diplomacy of Asian Middle Powers (Lexington Books, 2021), UN Governance: Peace and Human Security in Cambodia and Timor-Leste (Springer, 2020), Regional Cooperation for Peace and Development (Routledge, 2018), National Security, State Centricity, and Governance in East Asia (Springer, 2017), Peacekeeping and the Asia-Pacific (Brill, 2016), Democratic Governance in East Asia (Springer, 2015), Post-Conflict Development in East Asia (Ashgate, 2014), and The Protection and Promotion of Human Security in East Asia (Palgrave, 2013).

Panel Presentation (2024) | TBA
David Mallows
UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom

Biography

Dr David Mallows is an Associate Professor at the UCL Institute of Education in the United Kingdom, where he also directs the IOE Academic Writing Centre. He has over 35 years of experience in adult education as a teacher, trainer, and researcher. His past roles include training future ESOL teachers and managing CELTA and other initial and continuing training programs.

Dr Mallows also held the position of Director of Research at the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy (NRDC), directing a diverse range of research projects on adult literacy, language, and numeracy. He currently collaborates with colleagues in Spain, Brazil, and Portugal on adult education research.

In addition to his research activities, Dr Mallows currently contributes to the UCL Institute of Education's MA TESOL program, leading the English Language Teaching Classroom Practice module. He also supervises PhD students in the fields of adult education and academic writing.

Keynote Presentation (2024) | AI and Education
Ljiljana Marković
European Centre for Peace and Development (ECPD), United Nations’ University for Peace

Biography

Ljiljana Marković is a Professor of Japanese Studies in the European Centre for Peace and Development (ECPD) of the United Nations University for Peace, and Special Advisor to the Executive Director and ECPD Academic Director. She is also a Visiting Professor at Toho University and Osaka University, Japan, and Gabriele d'Annunzio University, Italy.

Professor Marković is the author of a large number of publications in the fields of Japanese Studies and Economics. She completed her bachelor’s and master's degrees at Cambridge University, United Kingdom, before pursuing her doctorate at Chuo University, Japan. For many years, she was a Professor at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, with terms as Dean (2016-2020) and Vice Dean of Financial Affairs (2008-2016). She has served as the Chairperson of the International Silk Road Academic Studies Symposium since 2017.

Professor Marković received the Gaimu Daijin Sho Award from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan in 2010. In the following year, she received the Dositej Obradovic Award for Pedagogical Achievement. Professor Marković recent accolades include the Medal of Merit by the President of Serbia in 2020, the Isidora Sekulic Medal for Academic Achievement in 2021, and the Order of the Rising Sun (Gold Rays with Rosette) in 2022, an Imperial Decoration awarded by the Government of Japan for her "outstanding contribution to establishing and improving friendly relations with Japan”.

Panel Presentation (2024) | TBA
James W. McNally
University of Michigan & NACDA Program on Aging, United States

Biography

Dr James W. McNally is the director of the NACDA Program on Aging, a research program funded by the US National Institutes of Health for almost 50 years. During his career, Dr McNally has routinely written multi-million dollar research applications. Consistently funded by agencies, including NIH, NSF, the MacArthur Foundation, and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), he mentors graduate students and junior faculty in developing and maintaining a grant portfolio. Dr McNally is a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, a world-renowned organisation recognised for its leadership in survey development and independently funded research.

Special Seminar Session (2024) | An Introduction to the IAFOR Undergraduate Research Symposium (IURS)
Cian O’Donovan
University College London (UCL), United Kingdom

Biography

Dr Cian O'Donovan is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL, United Kingdom. He studies the policies and processes of AI, robotics, and digital change using social science-led interdisciplinary approaches. Dr O’Donovan collaborates with people directly impacted by innovation, such as organisations, industry professionals, and service-users in care sectors. He is currently leading research that investigates what happens when innovation appears in sectors usually neglected by technology policy or Silicon Valley, asking questions such as who really benefits from innovation in said sectors; who is driving and steering change within them, and what are the impacts of innovative intervention for people and the planet? Dr O’Donovan has been steadfast in his work to ensure this research contributes to public engagement and movement building that can challenge powerful interests in order to achieve a more sustainable and fairer world. In 2014, he co-founded Uplift, Ireland's largest digital advocacy organisation for progressive social change.

Keynote Presentation (2024) | Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Democracy
Neelam Raina
Middlesex University, United Kingdom

Biography

Dr Neelam Raina is an Associate Professor of Design and Development at Middlesex University, London. Her research interests include conflict, security, peace building, material cultures, gender, and livelihood generation in fragile, conflict affected states. Raina’s work explores notions of healing, trauma, peace and reflection through the embodied practices of making, using material culture and tacit knowledge as the underpinning for approaching violence and peace building and for sustainable income generation. Raina is a post conflict reconstruction expert with a focus on South Asia where she has conducted extensive empirical research over the last two decades. The Women, Peace and Security agenda is key to Neelam’s and her research seeks to foreground voices of vulnerable and marginalised women.

Dr Raina has led several large-scale competitively funded research projects which examine material and social practices through which Muslim women in conflict areas reproduce themselves on a daily and generational basis, and through which the social relations and material bases of capitalism are renewed. Her work allows connections to be built between, creative home-based workers who are largely seen as peripheral, to development economics, and on the fringes of formal employment and contributors to GDP; to the larger notions of peace building, countering and preventing violent extremism, poverty spirals and conflict theory through culturally significant, socially relevant practices. She connects the British creative industry into solution-based impactful approaches to global challenges through research.

Raina is a strong advocate for Afghan women and is the Director of the Secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Afghan women and girls in UK parliament. Her research in Afghanistan is ongoing as she brings women’s tacit knowledge to commercially viable spaces from the confines of the home.

Raina has a PhD in Design and Development, and a Master’s in Design and Manufacture from De Montfort University, Leicester. From 2018-2021, she was the Challenge Leader for UKRI’s Conflict and Security Portfolio for the Global Challenges Research Fund. Raina has been a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security. She is the editor for the International Journal of Traditional Arts, and her new work Creative Economies of Culture in South Asia – Performers and Craftspeople was published in 2021.

Keynote Presentation (2024) | TBA

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2023) | Schrodinger’s Box of Interdisciplinarity – Inside and Outside the Box Thinking About Global Challenges
Ana Pellicer-Sánchez
UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom

Biography

Dr Ana Pellicer-Sánchez is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at the Institute of Education in the Faculty of Education and Society University College London (UCL), United Kingdom. She is a member of the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics, where she conducts research on second language acquisition. Her research focuses on the teaching and learning of vocabulary in a second or foreign language. Recently, she has turned her focus on the use of eye-tracking technology to examine the cognitive processes involved in vocabulary learning when using different input conditions. Her work has appeared in international journals such as Language Learning, Language Teaching Research, Language Teaching, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, and The Modern Language Journal, among others. She is co-author of Eye-tracking in Applied Linguistics Research (2018), and co-editor of Understanding formulaic language: A second language acquisition perspective (2019). She has recently co-edited a special issue on “Eye-tracking in Vocabulary Research in Research Methods in Applied Linguistics” (2024).

Dr Pellicer-Sánchez has participated in a number of national and international projects and committees, exploring the acquisition of English in different contexts. She has been the convenor of the Vocabulary Studies Special Interest Group of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (2018-2022) and the co-chair of the London Second Language Acquisition Research Forum (2019-2021). She is also a founding member of the British Council Eye-tracking Special Interest Group. Currently, she serves as associate editor of The Language Learning Journal, and as a member of the advisory board of various academic journals.

Keynote Presentation (2024) | The Examination of Eye Movements in Language Learning Research: A Focus on Vocabulary
Marcelo Staricoff
University of Sussex, United Kingdom

Biography

Dr Marcelo Staricoff is a Lecturer in Education at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Marcelo is currently the joint Course Leader of the BA Primary and Early Years with QTS Course and will also take on the leadership of the Masters in Education Course from September 2024. He is the author of the book entitled The Joy of Not Knowing (Routledge, 2021), a publication on the Philosophy of Education Transforming Teaching, Thinking, Learning, and Leadership in Schools. A former scientist and primary school headteacher, Professor Staricoff has worked on behalf of UNICEF with policy makers, educators, and textbook publishers to implement a reformed national curriculum in Uzbekistan. He also works for the Coram Children’s Charity alongside implementing courses and advising several schools and educational organisations in the United Kingdom.

Professor Staricoff speaks regularly at national and international events on the principles that underpin The Joy of Not Knowing’s philosophy of education and school leadership. He is also the author of its predecessor, Start Thinking (Imaginative Minds, 2005) and has published widely in the fields of creative, critical, multilingual, multicultural, and philosophical thinking and learning in the classroom. A member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Education (APPG), and Chair of the Michael Aldrich Foundation, Professor Staricoff’s work and his contributions to education have been widely recognised, being named as a Founding Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching in 2019 and through his assignment as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2023.

Keynote Presentation (2024) | The Joy of Not Knowing