Invited Speakers

Niigata Agro-Food University, Japan

Dr. Nobuyo Fukaya is an associate professor at Niigata Agro-Food University in Niigata, Japan. She was formerly a lecturer at Shibaura Institute of Technology (Tokyo, Japan). She earned her B.A. from Rikkyo University (Tokyo, Japan) and her M.A. and Ph.D from Tsuda University (Tokyo, Japan). The title of her doctoral dissertation is Optimality Theory and Language Change: The Activation of Potential Constraint Interactions. The revised version of her dissertation was published by Kaitakusya, Japan. In her dissertation, she explained English word order changes, such as the verb-second phenomenon and its loss within Optimality Theory by re-ranking the set of constraints and tackled the question of how this re-ranking took place. She is currently studying how language develops. Her publications address the areas of language acquisition of L1 English-speaking children and Japanese EFL learners. She has collected extensive data using the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database (MacWhinney 2000) and explained within Optimality Theory how and why children acquire their mother tongue. She has particularly focused on the acquisition of wh-questions, comparing children’s and parents’ utterances. Her recently published papers on first language acquisition are “Case Study 1” (2022), “Optimality Theory and the Development of Do-Support in Children’s Wh-Questions” (2023), and “A CHILDES-Based Study on the English Dative Alternation” (2023). In addition, she has addressed second language acquisition using the Japanese EFL learner (JEFLL) Corpus (Tono 2007), and has compared L1 English-speaking children and Japanese EFL learners. Her major article on Japanese EFL learners is “Comparison of Japanese EFL Learners and L1 English Children: The English Dative Alternation” (2023). She is also one of the translators of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language written by Rodney and Geoffrey (2002) (Eibunpou daijiten shiriizu vol. 0, 2017) and Language Change written by Bybee (2015) (Gengo-wa donoyouni henkasurunoka, 2019), and has contributed to deepening the understanding of linguistics for beginners.

 


Northeastern University, USA


Daniel Noemi Voionmaa is a cultural critic, chronicler, and scholar of Latin American literature and culture. He obtained his PhD from Yale University. His research and teaching focuses on the intersection of critical theory and literature, and on visual arts, film, and politics. He is the author of four books and many articles.
Leer la pobreza en América Latina: Literatura y velocidad [Reading Poverty in Latin America: Literature and Velocity] (Cuarto Propio, 2004; second edition 2011) develops the notion of the Aesthetic of Poverty, using the concept of velocity as a starting point to analyze literature, film, and visual arts in Ecuador and the Southern Cone during at the turn of the 21st century.
Revoluciones que no fueron: ¿Arte o política? Más allá de realismos y vanguardias en América Latina [Revolutions that did not happen, Art or Politics? Beyond Realism and Avant-Garde in Latin America] (Cuarto Propio, 2013) studies the 1920s and 1930s in Ecuador and Chile, analyzing political discourses, political performances and economic crisis alongside novels, short stories, manifestos, poetry, and literary and political magazines and journals.
En tiempo fugitivo: Narrativas latinoamericanas contemporáneas [In Fugitive Times: Contemporary Latin American Narratives (Universidad Alberto Hurtado UP, 2016), is an interpretation of Latin America’s recent literature that provides a panoramic and critical interpretation of the last 30 years.
Surveillance, the Cold War and Latin American Literature (Cambridge UP, 2022) is a social, political, cultural and aesthetic analysis of the relations between secret police agencies and intellectuals and writers.
His current research –for which he obtained a FIFA-CIES fellowship– is on Latin American literature, soccer, modernization, and national identities.
He teaches courses on human rights and violence, literature, poverty and soccer, politics and contemporary Latin American Film and narrative.
Currently, he teaches Latin American Literature and Culture at Northeastern University, in Boston. Previously, he was on the faculty in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he earned tenure, and in the Department of Languages and Literatures at Bard College, where he was a visiting assistant professor. He has been a guest lecturer at universities in Spain, UK, Germany, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Ecuador, and the US.
 

 


Sichuan University, China

Yina Cao is a Ph.D. supervisor and a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, with a research focus on cross-cultural communication and comparative cultural studies.
She has successfully led and completed four national and provincial social science research projects and has contributed to five major national bidding projects. Dr. Cao has published five English-language papers in A&HCI journals and over twenty papers in CSSCI journals. In recognition of her scholarly contributions, she was awarded the First Prize for Outstanding Papers by the Chinese Journalism History Association in 2022 and the Humanities and Social Sciences Excellence Award by Sichuan University in the same year.
Dr. Cao has authored and edited three monographs. She holds several significant academic positions, including Secretary-General of the Digital Humanities Section of the International Comparative Literature Association, Executive Director of the Cultural Communication Semiotics Research Committee of the Chinese Association for Literary and Art Theory, Council Member of the Canadian Studies Section of the Chinese Association for World Ethnology, and the Deputy Director of the Canadian Studies Center at the College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Sichuan University.


 

 

 


The University of Tokyo, Japan

Qin Xu is currently a researcher at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, at the University of Tokyo. He has carved a notable path in the field of Korean language studies. He possesses a diverse educational background, holding a Bachelor of Engineering in Software Engineering and a Bachelor of Letters in Spanish from Jilin University, China. Furthering his academic pursuits, Xu completed his Master of Letters and Doctor of Letters at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, the University of Tokyo, Japan.
Xu's professional journey is equally impressive. He began as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Tokyo, the Lab of Study of Korean Culture, and has since become a part-time lecturer at some institutions such as Keio University, Kanda University of International Studies, Meiji Gakuin University, Teikyo University, and Tokyo Woman's Christian University. His dedication to teaching the Korean language is evident through his multifaceted roles.
In his research, Xu has employed experimental phonetic methods to elucidate the acoustic characteristics of Yanbian Korean, spoken in Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Jilin Province, China. Yanbian Korean is crucial for dialect studies as it is based on the Hamgyong dialect of North Korea, now difficult to investigate. Despite substantial research on Yanbian Korean, comprehensive phonetic descriptions across its phonemic system were lacking. Xu addressed this gap during his master's and doctoral studies, examining its monophthongs, diphthongs, and consonants. He is now dedicating himself to the auditory phonetics study in the Korean dialect which will include perceptual experiments.
Due to Yanbian Korean becoming an endangered language, Xu's ongoing research aims to resolve these challenges, compile the collected phonetic data, and construct a comprehensive speech corpus for Yanbian Korean, ensuring its preservation and wider accessibility for research.


 

 

 


Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia

Dr Mariam Mohamad is a Senior Lecturer at Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang Malaysia. Her research interest is in the field of mobile learning and mobile assistive technology. Dr Mariam was acknowledged as one of the pioneers from Malaysia in mobile learning research, in the book entitled Mobile Learning in Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific Region published by Springer. Her work also referred by UNESCO in the publication entitled; Turning on Mobile Learning: Illustrative Initiatives and Policy Implications.
Dr. Mariam has extensive experience in disseminating her work internationally. She actively involves presenting her work in international conferences with ISI Web of Science and SCOPUS indexed status. She was invited by UNESCO to present her work in Mobile Learning Week 2014 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. She was also invited by ICEMT 2018 to give her speech in Okinawa, Japan and IMLF2018 in Singapore. In 2019, she was invited by ICEDU2019 in Kuala Lumpur as a plenary speaker and forum panelist. She also attended ICEMT 2019 in Nagoya, Japan as a plenary speaker. In 2020 she was invited as a keynote speaker for IMRC 2020 in Philippines. In 2021, she contributed as the keynote speaker in TEL 2021, plenary speaker in ICSE 2021 and also as invited speaker for ICEEL 2021. Recent contribution was as invited speaker in ICIET 2022.
For her success in the field, in 2021, she was awarded with international grants which include Sumitomo Foundation and Japan Foundation to support her research in mobile assistive technology. For the community, she also devoted her time as the Advisor for Special Need Students Association, University Sains Malaysia. She is also a committee member for Research & Development Unit, Malaysian Association for The Blind.


University of Malaya, Malaysia

Dr. Chew Fong Peng is a associate professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Malaya (UM), Malaysia, teaching Malay language education and early childhood education program. She has presented approximately 176 working papers in international and international seminars and conferences in Malaysia and foreign countries, published 9 books, 132 articles published in journals, 72 papers in conference proceedings, 44 chapters in books, 21 translated books including creative writings, 14 edited books, and edited creative writings. She is the book editor of Taylor & Francis, editor for Malaysian Year 4, 5, and 6 History textbooks, and Year 1 Arts and Music Education textbooks. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Chew has completed 31 research projects, 10 of which were led by Chew. She won many medals in the academy and innovative expo, besides being listed in Marquis Who's Who in the World 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. Chew is an article reviewer for established international journals on the Web of Science and Scopus, such as Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, SAGE Open, Educational Research and Reviews (ERR), Pertanika: Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, GEMA Online, etc. Associate Professor Dr. Chew is also a member of the editorial board of 11 national and international journals including Journal of Contemporary Educational Research, Review of Educational Theory, GATR Global Journal for Business & Social Science Review, and Advisory of International Research and Development Center for Publication (IRDCP). She was invited as a visiting professor at Peking University, China from October 2011 to June 2012.