BAMC2021

BAMC2021

December 08–10, 2021 | Held online from the University of Barcelona, Spain


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Plenary Speakers

  • Baden Offord
    Baden Offord
    Curtin University, Australia
  • Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes
    Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes
    Curtin University, Australia
  • Bill Phillips
    Bill Phillips
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • M. G. Sanchez
    M. G. Sanchez
    Writer, UK
  • Sara Martín
    Sara Martín
    Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
  • Gloria Montero
    Gloria Montero
    Novelist, Playwright & Poet
  • Isabel Alonso-Breto
    Isabel Alonso-Breto
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Spotlight Speakers

  • Mario Pace
    Mario Pace
    University of Malta, Malta

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Programme

  • Resisting Assessment
    Resisting Assessment
    Featured Interview: Bill Phillips & Sara Martín
  • Engaging with Culture: A Conversation on Decolonising the Future
    Engaging with Culture: A Conversation on Decolonising the Future
    Keynote Presentation: Baden Offord & Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes
  • Brexit, Borders and the Gibraltarian Voice: a Conversation With M.G.Sanchez
    Brexit, Borders and the Gibraltarian Voice: a Conversation With M.G.Sanchez
    Featured Interview: M.G.Sanchez & Isabel Alonso

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Organising Committee

  • Baden Offord
    Baden Offord
    Curtin University, Australia
  • Isabel Alonso-Breto
    Isabel Alonso-Breto
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Cornelis Martin Renes
    Cornelis Martin Renes
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Montserrat Camps-Gaset
    Montserrat Camps-Gaset
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Donald E. Hall
    Donald E. Hall
    University of Rochester, USA
  • Sue Ballyn
    Sue Ballyn
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

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Review Committee

  • Isabel Alonso-Breto, University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Sue Ballyn, University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Montserrat Camps-Gaset, University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Joseph Haldane, The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Donald E. Hall, University of Rochester, United States
  • Baden Offord, Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia & Cultural Studies Association of Australasia
  • Cornelis Martin Renes, University of Barcelona, Spain

Senior Reviewers

  • Dr Daniel McKay, Doshisha University, Japan

Reviewers

  • Dr Vered Elishar Malka, The Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, Israel
  • Dr Donia M. Bettaieb, University of King Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia
  • Professor Nagayuki Saito, International Professional University of Technology in Tokyo, Japan
  • Dr Peggy Shannon, San Diego State University, United States
  • Dr César Viana Teixeira, Pontifical University of Goiás, Brazil
  • Dr Dana Weimann Saks, Yezreel Valley College, Israel

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Baden Offord
Curtin University, Australia

Biography

Baden Offord is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights at Curtin University, Australia. Born in Aotearoa/New Zealand of Māori and Pākehā heritage, he has lived most of his life in Australia, as well as several years in Spain, South India, and Japan. An internationally respected scholar in human rights, education, sexuality and culture, his latest book (co-edited with Fleay, Hartley, Woldeyes and Chan) is Activating Cultural and Social Change: The Pedagogies of Human Rights (London, Routledge: 2022).

Professor Offord has held academic appointments as the Dr Haruhisa Handa Chair of Human Rights in the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University (2015-2020); as Chair (Visiting Professor) of Australian Studies, Centre for Pacific and American Studies at The University of Tokyo (2010-2011); as Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona; and as Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights at Southern Cross University (1999-2014). He has also had visiting positions at Indiana University, the University of Auckland, and La Trobe University. In 2021 he was appointed an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) ‘for distinguished service in tertiary education in the field of human rights, social justice and cultural diversity.'

Professor Offord is a member of IAFOR’s Academic Governing Board. He is Chair of the Cultural & Area Studies section of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Keynote Presentation (2021): Engaging with Culture: A Conversation on Decolonising the Future

Previous BCE Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2020): The Relevance of the Humanities and Arts in Uncertain Times
Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes
Curtin University, Australia

Biography

Dr Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes is a Senior Lecturer, multidisciplinary researcher and writer based at Curtin University’s Centre for Human Rights Education, Australia. Drawing from the history, philosophy and experiences of marginalised people and communities, Yirga contributes critical insights for reimagining the future and addressing epistemic and racial injustices. He researches African experience and Ethiopian traditions and writes creatively on belonging and diasporic lives. He has won university and industry awards for his teaching, research, and creative writing. His publications include the sole-authored book Native Colonialism: Education and the Economy of Violence Against Traditions in Ethiopia. (New Jersey: The Red Sea Press, 2017) and the forthcoming book (with Offord, Fleay, Hartley and Chan) Activating Cultural and Social Change: The Pedagogies of Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2022).

Keynote Presentation (2021): Engaging with Culture: A Conversation on Decolonising the Future
Bill Phillips
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Bill Phillips is a senior lecturer in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at the University of Barcelona, Catalonia. He has published widely on poetry in English, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, science fiction and crime fiction. Together with other members of the Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, based at the University of Barcelona, his most recent research has been on postcolonial crime fiction and he is currently working on the Sean Duffy novels of Adrian McKinty, and the crime novels of Jacob Ross.

Interview Session (2021) | Resisting Assessment
M. G. Sanchez
Writer, UK

Biography

M. G. Sanchez is a Gibraltarian writer based in the UK. He studied at the University of Leeds, where he obtained BA, MA and PhD degrees in English Literature. He is the author of fourteen books, among them novels, journals, memoirs, historical studies and collections of short stories. His writing focuses on Gibraltarian identity politics and on the geopolitical challenges facing the Rock and its inhabitants. He is also interested in borders, Brexit, masculinity, national stereotypes and colonial/post-colonial discourses of “otherness”. More information about his writing can be found at https://www.mgsanchez.net and www.facebook.com/mgsanchezwriter/.

Interview Session (2021) | Brexit, Borders and the Gibraltarian Voice: a Conversation With M.G.Sanchez
Sara Martín
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Sara Martín is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Cultural Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Dr Martín specialises in Gender Studies, particularly Masculinities Studies, which she applies to the study of popular fictions in English, with an emphasis on science fiction. Her most recent books are Masculinity and Patriarchal Villainy in British Fiction: From Hitler to Voldemort (2019) and Representations of Masculinity in Literature and Film: Focus on Men (2020).

Interview Session (2021) | Resisting Assessment
Gloria Montero
Novelist, Playwright & Poet

Biography

Novelist, playwright and poet Gloria Montero grew up in a family of Spanish immigrants in Australia’s North Queensland. After studies in theatre and music, she began to work in radio and theatre, and then moved to Canada where she continued her career as an actress, singer, writer, broadcaster, scriptwriter and TV interviewer.

Co-founder of the Centre for Spanish-Speaking Peoples in Toronto (1972), she served as its Director until 1976. Following the success of her oral history The Immigrants (1973) she was invited to act as Consultant on Immigrant Women to the Multicultural Department of the Secretary of State, Government of Canada.

She organised the international conferences "Amnistia" (1970) and "Solidaridad" (1974) in Toronto to support and make known the democratic Spain that was developing in the last years of the Franco dictatorship, and in 1976 at Bethune College, York University, "Spain 1936-76: The Social and Cultural Aftermath of the Spanish Civil War".

With her husband, filmmaker David Fulton, she set up Montero-Fulton Productions to produce documentary films on social, cultural and ecological themes. Their film, Crisis in the Rain, on the effects of acid rain, won the Gold Camera Award American Film Festival 1982. Montero was consultant-interviewer on Dreams and Nightmares (A-O Productions, California) about Spain under Franco, a film that won international awards in Florence, Moscow, Leipzig and at the American Film Festival 1975.

Among her many radio documentaries for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are: The Music of Spain – a series of 18 hours which presented Spanish music within a social and historical framework; Segovia: the man and his music — a 2-hour special (Signature); Women and the Law (Ideas); Foreign Aid: Hand-out or Rip-Off (Ideas).

Since 1978 Montero has been living in Barcelona, where she has continued to write and publish novels such as The Villa Marini, All Those Wars and Punto de Fuga. Her poem Les Cambres was printed with a portfolio of prints by artist Kouji Ochiai (Contratalla 1983). A cycle of prose poems, Letters to Janez Somewhere in Ex-Yugoslavia, provided the basis for collaboration with painter Pere Salinas in a highly successful exhibition at Barcelona's Galería Eude (1995).

She won the 2003 NH Premio de Relato for Ménage à Trois, the first time the Prize was awarded for a short story in English.

Well known among her theatre work is the award-winning Frida K., which has toured Canada, played New York and Mexico and has been mounted in productions in Spain, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden and Latvia.

Photo by Pilar Aymerich.

Featured Interview (2022): Gloria Montero Asks Joseph Haldane to Tell His Story

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2021): “In Conversation with Gloria Montero”
Keynote Presentation (2020): KNOCK KNOCK... WHO'S THERE?
Discussion Panel (2020): “In Conversation with Gloria Montero”
Isabel Alonso-Breto
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Dr Isabel Alonso-Breto obtained her PhD from the University of Barcelona in 2003, where she is currently a Senior Lecturer. A scholar in the area of Postcolonial Studies, she has worked on authors of Caribbean, Canadian, Indian and South-African origin, while her present research focusses on literature and life writing by Sri Lankan authors, mostly of the diaspora. A visiting scholar in recent years at the Universities of Toronto (Canada) and Marburg (Germany), Dr Alonso-Breto has been the guest editor of several issues of academic journals such as Coolabah and Indialogs, and is the general editor of the miscellaneous journal Blue Gum. Also interested in the social role of creative writing and translation, she has several pieces to her credit in this regard. Lately she has translated into Spanish the anthology Siembra solo Palabras, by Sri Lankan Tamil poet Cheran, published in 2019. Dr Alonso-Breto is a member of Ratnakara, a research group devoted to the study of the literatures and cultures of the Indian Ocean, and the Vice-Director of the Centre for Australian and Transnational Studies at the University of Barcelona.


Plenary Presentation (2023) | TBA

Previous Presentations

Interview Session (2021) | Brexit, Borders and the Gibraltarian Voice: a Conversation With M.G.Sanchez
Discussion Panel (2020) | In Conversation with Gloria Montero
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 business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s research and teaching is on history, politics, international affairs and international education, as well as governance and decision making. 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 is Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within Osaka University.

A Member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for Global Governance, Dr Haldane is also a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade (Serbia), a Visiting Professor at the School of Business at Doshisha University (Japan), where he teaches Ethics and Governance on the MBA programme, and a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s College of Education (USA), collaborating on the development of the Global PhD programme.

Dr Haldane has given invited lectures and presentations to universities and conferences around the world, 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 Office and the Cabinet Office in collaboration with IAFOR.

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.

Featured Interview (2022): Gloria Montero Asks Joseph Haldane to Tell His Story

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2021): “In Conversation with Gloria Montero”
Mario Pace
University of Malta, Malta

Biography

Chev. Dr Mario Pace is a Resident Senior Lecturer at the Department of Languages and Humanities in Education within the Faculty of Education at the University of Malta. He is also regularly invited as a Visiting Professor to hold lectures and seminars at various Universities and Educational Institutions across Europe. Dr Pace, an expert in the training and formation of teachers of foreign languages, also works in very close collaboration with the Ministry of Education in Malta where he was entrusted with the design and implementation of a national reform in the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the Maltese Islands. Dr Pace has given several keynote speeches at conferences both in Europe and the United States and has published various academic papers in peer reviewed journals. He is also the author of Marco Largi ovvero Carlo Magri – drammaturgo maltese (1617-1693) and Vita e opere (Midsea Books Malta, 2018. In May of 2018 he was awarded the prestigious title of “Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia” (OSI) by the President of the Italian Republic, in recognition of his significant contribution towards the promotion of the Italian culture in Malta, the strengthening of the relations between Italy and Malta, and especially for the efforts towards the enhancement of the teaching and learning of Italian in Maltese schools and other educational institutions. In January 2020 he was appointed Peer Reviewer and member of the Scientific Committee for the academic journal: Linguistica, Glottodidattica e Intercultura, published by Libreriauniversitaria.it. for ANVUR.


Spotlight Presentation

Sustaining Excellence in Academic Research in the Context of the New Normal

During the past 18 months, public health mitigation strategies across the globe have affected research to varying degrees. By way of example, university research in China was subject to strict control measures and was specifically focused on the mitigation of the spread of the virus across the country. In other parts of the globe, such as in the United States and in Europe, the majority of research activities considered as “nonessential” were suspended for specific time frames by various institutions. These not only included laboratory research in the physical and life sciences but also field-based activities involving direct human contact, such as educational research. In the first part of the paper a twofold analysis of the subject in question will be presented, namely “Sustaining Excellence in Academic Research”, and secondly, “The Context of the New Normal” while the second part will identify a variety of challenges and their unequal impact on different groups in the research community as a result of the pandemic. More than ever before, the need is felt for high-quality research that can serve as a source of reliable information, innovation, and “know-how” that is shared through various means across the globe. The current COVID-19 situation should not lead us to put a pause on our research activities but, on the contrary, as a global research community we should look at it as an opportunity to sustain excellence in academic research by aligning our ongoing work with the changing and pressing realities of the time.

Resisting Assessment
Featured Interview: Bill Phillips & Sara Martín

We are probably all familiar with students asking us the question “Will this be in the exam?” Given that we are educators, it should be obvious to us that it is we who have trained our students to ask this question. We – or the educational system of which we form a part – have taught them that it is assessment and certification which counts, not education. When considering means of assessment, as we are often required to do in staff meetings and training sessions, do we ever begin by actually reflecting on its purpose?

Giving examples from the teaching of modern languages in Catalan schools and universities, Bill Phillips will look at how assessment determines teaching content and how this can have devastating consequences for learning. Sara Martín will be describing her experience of teaching project-oriented courses in which the habitual system of exercise-based assessment is abandoned in favour of the collective production of an online e-book, and in which self-assessment is as important as the teacher's assessment.

Read presenter's biographies
Engaging with Culture: A Conversation on Decolonising the Future
Keynote Presentation: Baden Offord & Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes

One of the key features of future humanities research and teaching will be to enable intellectual and creative spaces within and beyond institutional settings that critically explore knowledge-making from a decolonising perspective and approach. Palestinian scholar Edward Said regarded culture as a fundamental place to consider the interdependent relationship between established traditions and the complex diversities of the world. He advocated for public intellectual and creative spaces where the social responsibilities and priorities of writers, educators, artists, poets and intellectuals could emerge with their radical and transformative energies. Our conversation will take up Said's call by pivoting towards aspects of culture where knowledge-making might be radically decolonised as a priority for the future. We will draw on our scholarship and experience of epistemic violence regarding Ethiopian knowledge-making, as well as living as cultural "others" in western settler societies.

Read presenter's biographies
Brexit, Borders and the Gibraltarian Voice: a Conversation With M.G.Sanchez
Featured Interview: M.G.Sanchez & Isabel Alonso

In this session Dr Isabel Alonso Breto of the University of Barcelona will be chatting with M. G. Sanchez, Gibraltar’s most well-known novelist. Sanchez – who holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Leeds – is the author of fourteen books with a Gibraltar theme, including six novels (The Escape Artist, Solitude House, Jonathan Gallardo, Diary of a Victorian Colonial, The Fetishist and Gooseman) and three autobiographical memoirs (Past, Bombay Journal and Border Control). Alonso and Sanchez will be discussing borders, Brexit and narrative voices in The Fetishist, the author’s latest novel (due to be published in October 2021), as well as looking at some of the broader challenges and obstacles faced by writers coming from contested micro-territories.

Read presenter's biography
Baden Offord
Curtin University, Australia

Biography

Baden Offord is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights at Curtin University, Australia. Born in Aotearoa/New Zealand of Māori and Pākehā heritage, he has lived most of his life in Australia, as well as several years in Spain, South India, and Japan. An internationally respected scholar in human rights, education, sexuality and culture, his latest book (co-edited with Fleay, Hartley, Woldeyes and Chan) is Activating Cultural and Social Change: The Pedagogies of Human Rights (London, Routledge: 2022).

Professor Offord has held academic appointments as the Dr Haruhisa Handa Chair of Human Rights in the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University (2015-2020); as Chair (Visiting Professor) of Australian Studies, Centre for Pacific and American Studies at The University of Tokyo (2010-2011); as Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona; and as Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights at Southern Cross University (1999-2014). He has also had visiting positions at Indiana University, the University of Auckland, and La Trobe University. In 2021 he was appointed an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) ‘for distinguished service in tertiary education in the field of human rights, social justice and cultural diversity.'

Professor Offord is a member of IAFOR’s Academic Governing Board. He is Chair of the Cultural & Area Studies section of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Keynote Presentation (2021): Engaging with Culture: A Conversation on Decolonising the Future

Previous BCE Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2020): The Relevance of the Humanities and Arts in Uncertain Times
Isabel Alonso-Breto
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Dr Isabel Alonso-Breto obtained her PhD from the University of Barcelona in 2003, where she is currently a Senior Lecturer. A scholar in the area of Postcolonial Studies, she has worked on authors of Caribbean, Canadian, Indian and South-African origin, while her present research focusses on literature and life writing by Sri Lankan authors, mostly of the diaspora. A visiting scholar in recent years at the Universities of Toronto (Canada) and Marburg (Germany), Dr Alonso-Breto has been the guest editor of several issues of academic journals such as Coolabah and Indialogs, and is the general editor of the miscellaneous journal Blue Gum. Also interested in the social role of creative writing and translation, she has several pieces to her credit in this regard. Lately she has translated into Spanish the anthology Siembra solo Palabras, by Sri Lankan Tamil poet Cheran, published in 2019. Dr Alonso-Breto is a member of Ratnakara, a research group devoted to the study of the literatures and cultures of the Indian Ocean, and the Vice-Director of the Centre for Australian and Transnational Studies at the University of Barcelona.


Plenary Presentation (2023) | TBA

Previous Presentations

Interview Session (2021) | Brexit, Borders and the Gibraltarian Voice: a Conversation With M.G.Sanchez
Discussion Panel (2020) | In Conversation with Gloria Montero
Cornelis Martin Renes
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Dr Cornelis Martin Renes graduated from the University of Barcelona with a BA in 2001, an MA in 2006 and PhD in 2010. He joined the English and German Philology staff in 2001. His main teaching areas have been English poetry from the Renaissance to contemporary times, and postcolonial studies with a special emphasis on the Asia-Pacific area and Australia in particular. He wrote his thesis on indigenous Australian literature and identity formation. He co-directs the Australian Studies Centre at the university, which was recognised as an official University of Barcelona Centre in 2000. Since the 2000s his main area of research has been indigenous Australian literature, and more recently he has become a member of a research project, POCRIF, which looks at postcolonial crime fiction and is funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education. He currently holds the positions of Adjunct Lecturer, Co-Director of the Australian Studies Centre at the University of Barcelona, and Member of the EASA (European Association for Studies of Australia) Board. He maintains steady contact with Australian academia through visiting fellowships.

Panel Presentation (2020): Embracing Difference: The Work of Art
Montserrat Camps-Gaset
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Montserrat Camps-Gaset (Barcelona 1958) graduated in Classical Philology at the University of Barcelona in 1980. Her MA thesis on Maleficent Women in Archaic and Classical Greece won the Faculty prize. In 1985, she read her PhD thesis on Ancient Greek Festivals. In 1982, she also graduated in Theology in Barcelona. In 1989, she became Senior Lecturer at the Barcelona University. In 1992 and 1993, she went to the University of Leipzig thanks to a special development program of the DAAD for East Germany universities.

Apart from Catalan and Spanish, her native tongues, she speaks English, French and German fluently, has a good knowledge of Italian and Modern Greek and a basic level of Russian. Her main interests are Mythology, First Christianism, Early Byzantine authors, and Classical Tradition. Her interests include folklore, women studies and national identity.

She has translated many works from Greek, German and Modern Greek into Catalan. She is currently working on the Catalan edition of Plato’s Laws in four volumes, and on a Catalan version of the Corpus Hermeticum. She has also translated books for children and youngsters from English and German into Catalan and Spanish. In 2013, she taught a Seminar on Literary Translation at the University of Leipzig.

She has published a book in French on Ancient Greek Festivals, and papers on Ancient Greek Religion, Women Studies, Mythology and EarlyChristianism, as well as Classical Tradition in modern writers. In 1998, she published a book of poetry.

At Barcelona University, she has been Head of the Greek Department (2001-2004) and Dean of the Philological Faculty (2004-2008), and has participated on the University Board for many years. She is a member of several societies for Classical Studies and for Literature, such as the Catalan Pen Club.

Since 2008, she is a member of the CEAT’s Executive Committee. Thinking that academic activity must also include an engagement in communicating with a broader audience, she has undertaken the honour of codirecting the Centre as a new academic challenge for developing its capacity of producing and sharing knowledge.

Donald E. Hall
University of Rochester, USA

Biography

Donald E. Hall is Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at the University of Rochester, USA. Prior to moving to Rochester, he was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, USA. Dean 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 IAFOR. He is Chair of the Arts, Humanities, Media & Culture division of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Sue Ballyn
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Dr Sue Ballyn is the Founder and Honorary Director of the Centre for Australian and Transnational Studies Centre at the University of Barcelona from where she graduated with a BA in 1982. Her MA thesis on the writings of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes won the Faculty prize in 1983. In 1986 she won the Faculty prize again, this time for her PhD thesis on Australian Poetry, the first PhD on Australian Literature in Spain.

She joined the English and German Philology Department on graduation 1982 and has remained at the university ever since. In 1990 she founded the Australian Studies Program which was recognised as an official University of Barcelona Observatory - Studies Centre in 2000, known as CEA, Observatorio Centre d’Estudis Australians. It is the only Australian Studies Centre in Spain and one of the most active in Europe.

Over the last twenty-five years, Sue Ballyn’s research has been focused on foreign convicts transported to Australia, in particular Spanish, Portuguese, Hispanics and Sephardim, and she works closely with the Female Convicts Research Centre, Tasmania. She has published and lectured widely in the area, very often in collaboration with Professor Lucy Frost. May 25th 2018 will see the publication of a book on Adelaide de la Thoreza, a Spanish convict, written by herself and Lucy Frost.

More recently she has become involved in a project on ageing in literature DEDAL-LIT at Lleida University which in turn formed part of a European project on ageing: SIforAge. As part of this project she is working on Human Rights and the Elderly, an area she started to research in 1992. In 2020 a book of interviews with elderly women, with the working title Stories of Experience, will be published as a result of this project. These oral stories are drawn from field work she has carried out in Barcelona.

She was recently involved in a ministry funded Project, run out of the Australian Studies Centre and headed by Dr Bill Phillips, on Postcolonial Crime Fiction (POCRIF). This last project has inevitably intertwined itself with her work on convicts and Australia. Her present work focuses on Sephardi Jews in Asian diaspora, and the construction of ageing.

Featured Interview (2022): “A Conversation with Poet Silvia Cuevas-Morales”
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 business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s research and teaching is on history, politics, international affairs and international education, as well as governance and decision making. 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 is Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within Osaka University.

A Member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for Global Governance, Dr Haldane is also a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade (Serbia), a Visiting Professor at the School of Business at Doshisha University (Japan), where he teaches Ethics and Governance on the MBA programme, and a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s College of Education (USA), collaborating on the development of the Global PhD programme.

Dr Haldane has given invited lectures and presentations to universities and conferences around the world, 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 Office and the Cabinet Office in collaboration with IAFOR.

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.

Featured Interview (2022): Gloria Montero Asks Joseph Haldane to Tell His Story

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2021): “In Conversation with Gloria Montero”