Speaker Bios
Learn more about the exceptional scholars who will be sharing their insights with us on April 26 at the Shifting Linguistic Landscapes Conference and the pre-conference learning series on April 10 and 24.
Dr. Rahat Zaidi (Naqvi) Dr. Rahat Zaidi is a Professor and Chair of Language and Literacy in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. Her research expertise focuses on multilingual literacies that clarify intersectional understandings across sociophobia, diversity, immigration, and pluralism. Through her research, she advances social justice and equity, transculturalism, and identity positioning in immigrant and transcultural contexts. Dr. Zaidi’s recent publications include “Dual Language Books: Enhancing Engagement and Language Awareness” published by the Journal of Literacy Research, “Digitizing Dual-Language Book Pedagogies in Uncertain Times'' published by The Reading Teacher, and “Identity Texts: An Intervention to Internationalize the Classroom published by Pedagogies: An International Journal.
Dr. Umit Boz is a Senior Instructor and Director of Student Experience for the Community-based BEd program in the Werklund School of Education. Positioned at the intersection of Applied Linguistics, Communication, and Education, Dr. Boz’s research is centered on developing and applying novel discourse analysis techniques to better understand how multilingual speakers negotiate and (re)construct their interactional roles and identities in a variety of settings, including situated interactions, task-based dialogues, and small group learning.
Eve Moreau is a Learning Specialist with the Calgary Board of Education supporting some of Canada's largest language programs in public education. Her academic background is in cultural anthropology. She obtained a graduate diploma in Latin American Studies from the Universidad Andina Simon Bolívar in Quito, Ecuador and a Master's in School Administration from Gonzaga University. She volunteers as a board member for Legados | Instituto Latinoamericano, a heritage language school in Montreal.
Dr. Ofelia García is Professor Emerita in the Ph.D. programs of Urban Education and of Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures (LAILAC) at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has been Professor of Bilingual Education at Columbia University's Teachers College, Dean of the School of Education at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University, and Professor of Education at The City College of New York. Among her best-known books are Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective; Translanguaging; Language, Bilingualism and Education (with Li Wei, 2015 British Association of Applied Linguistics Book Award recipient). In 2016 García received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bank Street Graduate School of Education, and in 2017 she received the Charles Ferguson Award in Applied Linguistics from the Center of Applied Linguistics, and the Lifetime Career Award from the Bilingual Education SIG of the American Education Research Association.
Presentation time: 8:30 am (Keynote)
Topic: Translanguaging and Multilingualism
Dr. Marie-Paule Lory is an Assistant Professor in the French Program in the Department of Language Studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga (hired 2015). Professor Lory completed her PhD in the field of language teaching at the University of Montreal (2015). For nine years, she coordinated a Language Awareness program in Montreal (ELODIL) and she is also part of an innovative research project that supports second language development through Creative Expression Theatre and Language Awareness activities. Since 2017, she is the President of the international association EDILIC (www.edilic.org). Her main research interests focus on linguistic representation among second language learners and on inclusion of linguistic and cultural diversity in teaching practice in primary and secondary school.
Presentation time: 10:00 am
Topic (in french): Éveil aux langues en contexte francophone canadien / Awakening to Languages in the francophonie in Canada
Dr. Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer is Associate Professor at the University of Hamburg (Germany). She has taken part in several international projects on the development of the Intercomprehension across Romance Languages and, more recently, in European projects dealing with multilingual pedagogies in foreign language learning and teacher education. She coordinates the Erasmus Plus project LoCALL - Local Linguistic Landscapes for global language education in the school context (2019-2022). She has published extensively about multilingual interaction, intercomprehension between Romance Languages, foreign language teacher education, and pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures. Recent publications include the 2019 “Visualising Multilingual Lives. More than words” co-edited with Paula Kalaja (Multilingual Matters), a BAAL Prize 2020 finalist.
Presentation time: 10:00 am
Topic: Linguistic landscapes in the foreign language classroom: a pathway to multilingual pedagogies and teacher professional development.
Dr. Bonny Norton, FRSC, is a University Killam Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia. Her primary research interests are identity and language learning, critical literacy, and international development. She is committed to the use of open technology for educational change, and her current projects are Storybooks Canada (storybookscanada.ca) and Global Storybooks (globalstorybooks.net). Recent publications include a 2017 special issue on language teacher identity (MLJ). A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Educational Research Association, she was selected BC 2020 Academic of the Year. Learn more
Listen to Dr. Bonny Norton reflect on her childhood in the apartheid era as she discusses multilingual literacy and identity.
Presentation time: 10:00 am
Topic: Identity, Investment, and Digital Storytelling for a Multilingual Future
Dr. Luciana C. de Oliveira is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor in the School of Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research focuses on issues related to teaching multilingual students at the K-12 level, including the role of language in learning the content areas and teacher education, advocacy and social justice. Her book, Handbook of TESOL in K-12 (de Oliveira, 2019), is the first handbook to explore the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages in elementary and secondary education (K-12). She is the author or editor of 24 books and over 200 publications in various outlets. She served on the presidential line of TESOL International Association (2017-2020) and was the first Latina to ever serve as President (2018-2019) of TESOL. Learn more about Dr. Luciana C. de Oliveira's research.
Presentation time: 10:00 am
Topic: Culturally Sustaining Teaching Practices in Elementary Classrooms with Multilingual Learners
Dr. Guofang Li is a Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Transnational/Global Perspectives of Language and Literacy Education of Children and Youth in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, UBC. Her program of research aims to improve the life success of immigrant and minority students by addressing the cultural, linguistic, instructional, and structural barriers in their literacy learning and academic achievement both in school, at home, and in the communities. Her recent research interests span longitudinal studies of immigrant children's bicultural and bi-literacy development through school, children and youth's new literacies practices in and out of school, technology-enhanced language teaching in primary and secondary schools, pre- and in-service TESOL teacher education, and current language and educational policy and practice in globalized contexts. Her work and contribution has been recognized by numerous national and international awards from American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Literary Research Association (LRA).
Presentation time: 11:30 am
Topic: Envisioning a Pedagogy of Cultural Reciprocity for Multilingual Learners in Transnational Contexts
Dr. Raúl Alberto Mora is at present an Associate Professor in the School of Education and Pedagogy at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB), where he teaches preservice methods courses and graduate-level seminars on research, literacies, and critical theory. Dr. Mora currently chairs the Literacies in Second Languages Project (LSLP), a research initiative linked to his participation in the Pedagogy and Didactics of Knowledge Research Group at UPB. He has served as educational adviser to the Colombian Ministry of Education and the Colombian Fulbright Commission on multiple occasions. His current research agenda includes alternative and 21st century literacies, second language education.
Presentation time: 11:30 am
Topic: Literacies in Second Languages: A new language learning and teaching praxis
Dr. Burcu Yaman Ntelioglou is an Associate Professor/Chair in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy in the Faculty of Education at Brandon University, Canada. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship and a PhD at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto and holds a Master's in education from York University, Canada. She teaches in both the teacher education and graduate education programs. Her work focuses on the education of linguistically and culturally diverse students in transcultural contexts of migration, multilingualism and globalization; critical applied linguistics; literacy education; language maintenance and revitalization; drama education; and the use of collaborative, community-based, participatory, and digital methodologies in research.
Presentation Time: 11:30 am
Topic: Pedagogies of belonging: Multilingual, transcultural and embodied language learning and identity positioning, as experienced by K-12 students from immigrant and refugee backgrounds
Dr. Jacqueline D’warte is a Senior Lecturer, in the School of Education at Western Sydney University. Dr D’warte is Deputy Leader of the Equity, Social Justice and Inclusion Research Group at WSU and her research examines connections between language, identity and learning in culturally and linguistically diverse settings. Her recent research engages teachers and young people as ethnographers of their own language and literacy practices as part of regular classroom practice. Recent publications include a 2021 special issue (LTR) building on students’ plurilingual repertoires across educational contexts.
Presentation Time: 1:30 pm
Topic: Reframing Language in Teaching and Learning: Building on Plurilingual Repertoires in Mainstream Classrooms
Dr. Gail Prasad is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research investigates teaching for critical multilingual language awareness, as well as teachers' and students' language and literacies practices in and out of linguistically and culturally diverse school contexts. She employs arts-based and creative multimodal methodologies to engage children and youth actively in representing their experiences as plurilingual actors in their schools and communities. Her research in Canada, the US and in France has been published in English and French.
Presentation Time: 1:30 pm
Topic: Be(com)ing Plurilingual Allies and Activists: Fostering Cultural and Linguistic Collaboration in the Classroom
Dr. Patriann Smith is an assistant professor in the College of Education at the University of South Florida. Dr. Smith's research focuses on cross-cultural, cross-racial and cross-linguistic considerations for literacy and language instruction and assessment in the learning and experiences of Black immigrant adolescents and educators. She recently guest edited the Special Issue, "Clarifying the Role of Race in the Literacies of Black Immigrant Youth" (Teachers College Record, 2020). This special issue centralizes race in research that examines Englishes and literacies of the largely invisible population of Black immigrant and transnational youth in the United States. Dr. Smith’s research has also appeared in journals such as the American Educational Research Journal, Reading Research Quarterly and Teaching and Teacher Education. She is a 2013 International Literacy Association Emerging Scholar Fellow, 2017 Literacy Research Association STAR Fellow, recipient of the 2015 American Educational Research Association Language and Social Processes SIG Emerging Scholar Award and author of the forthcoming book, "Black immigrant literacies: Translanguaging for success" (Cambridge University Press).
Presentation Time: 1:30 pm
Topic: A (Trans)Raciolinguistic Approach for Literacy Classrooms