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Speakers

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

Plenary Speakers

  • Isabel Alonso-Breto
    Isabel Alonso-Breto
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Sue Ballyn
    Sue Ballyn
    University of Barcelona, Spain
  • Núria Casado-Gual
    Núria Casado-Gual
    University of Lleida, Spain
  • Daniel Lutz
    Daniel Lutz
    Purrple, Spain
  • David Mallows
    David Mallows
    UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom
  • Donald E. Hall
    Donald E. Hall
    Binghamton University, United States
  • Raquel Medina
    Raquel Medina
    Aston University, United Kingdom
  • Inesa Shevchenko
    Inesa Shevchenko
    University of Lleida, Spain
  • Kateřina Valentová
    Kateřina Valentová
    University of Lleida, Spain

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Previous Speakers

View details of programming for past BCE conferences via the links below.

BCE2022 BCE2021 BCE2020
Isabel Alonso-Breto
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Isabel Alonso-Breto is a senior lecturer in Postcolonial Literatures in English at the University of Barcelona in Spain. Her research interests have focused on Postcolonial literatures in English with an emphasis on cultural intersections, migration and diasporas. Her latest publications include 'The pain becomes the poem': An Interview with Jean Arasanayagam; Only Sow Words: Cheran’s A Second Sunrise as Postcolonial Autobiography; 'Don’t be sorry. We didn’t do this’: Diaspora Choices in Vasugi Ganeshananthan’s Love Marriage; The Ethics of Care in the No Fire Zone: Anuk Arudpragasam's The Story of a Brief Marriage; and Ocean as Heritage: An Interview with Cheran.

She is a member of the research groups Ratnakara: Literatures and Cultures of the Indian Ocean and CELCA, Centre for the Study of English Literatures and Cultures, and of the UB Centre for Australian and Transnational Studies, in Spain, and of the Partnership Studies Group at the University of Udine in Italy.

Her most recent work focuses on the connections between literature and the ethics of care, where she is completing a monograph study. Besides the occasional translator, she is the author of the poetry collection Elogio de la tabla de surf y otros poemas desde el cáncer de mama (2021), translated into English as The Red Sea: Poetry from Cancer and Beyond, soon to be published.

Keynote Presentation (2023) | I Shall Be Brief: Spare Thoughts on Literature and Care

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
Sue Ballyn
University of Barcelona, Spain

Biography

Dr Sue Ballyn is the Founder 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 upon graduation 1982 and has remained at the university ever since. In 1987 she was awarded an ASAL Familiarisation Grant and spent six weeks in Australia. In 1990 she founded the Australian Studies Program, recognised as an official University of Barcelona Observatory - Studies Centre in 2000, known as CEA, Observatorio Centre d’Estudis Australians, now the Australian and Transnational Studies Centre (CEAT). 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 focused on foreign convicts transported to Australia, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, Hispanics and Sephardim. 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, including a book on Adelaide de la Thoreza, a Spanish convict, which was published in 2018.

More recently she has been 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. 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 the Asian diaspora, and the construction of ageing.

Previous Presentations

Featured Interview (2022): “A Conversation with Poet Silvia Cuevas-Morales”
Núria Casado-Gual
University of Lleida, Spain

Biography

Núria Casado-Gual is Associate Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain), where she teaches literature and drama in English and directs a theatre workshop since 2013. As a member of the research group Grup Dedal-Lit, which has focused on ageing studies and literature for more than two decades, she has conducted research on theatrical, literary and cinematic representations of ageing. As the group’s Principal Investigator between 2013 and 2022, she led three competitive projects in the field of cultural gerontology that examined the intersection between age, gender and creativity, as well as narrative expressions of later life. She has co-edited three volumes of essays on literary representations of ageing and a special issue on age and performance for Theatre Research in Canada, and has published chapters and articles on cultural interpretations of old age in relevant volumes for the field as well as in international journals such as Aging & Society, The Gerontologist, New Theatre Quarterly, and Feminist Media Studies. Núria Casado-Gual is also a theatre practitioner, and part of her creative work as a playwright is closely related to her research. Eight of her plays have been published to date in Catalan and English.

Keynote Presentation (2023): Old Age in the Spotlight: Towards an Anti-ageist Theatre in the Times of the ‘New Normal’
Daniel Lutz
Purrple, Spain

Biography

Born in Canada, Daniel has lived in South America, the Netherlands, Switzerland and now Spain.

Having begun his professional career as a theatre and English teacher at an international school in Caracas, Venezuela, Daniel recognised early on the potential in computer-assisted learning and co-founded one of the first educational multimedia companies in Europe. His company, Human Shareware, was one of 16 companies invited by the Dutch Ministry of Trade and Economic Affairs to take part in a trade mission to Australia, on the theme of innovation.

Bridging the worlds of interactive and broadcast media has been an ongoing theme in Daniel’s work. For almost a decade, he was a mentor and curriculum designer for an EU-funded initiative enabling European broadcasters to transition successfully from analogue to digital programming and has been an award-winning copywriter and cross-media concept developer for many of the world’s most prominent ad agencies.

Trying a different kind of impact, Daniel moved to Switzerland and began working for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN organisation responsible for information and communication technologies. There he conceived and managed numerous campaigns on such themes as climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He then worked for the Better Cotton Initiative, rebranding the organisation, developing their first suite of communication materials and setting them on the path for rapid expansion.

Since 2015, Daniel has worked as an independent communication strategist, with a diverse client base comprising Fortune 500 companies, UN and NGOs, and start-ups. He brings a strong behavioural design understanding to all his communication and strategy work.

Keynote Presentation (2023): Want Happiness? Become an Artist
David Mallows
UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom

Biography

Dr David Mallows serves as an Associate Professor at the UCL Institute of Education in the United Kingdom, where he also directs the IOE Academic Writing Centre. With over 35 years of experience in adult education, he has contributed significantly 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 across Spain, Brazil, and Portugal on adult education research.

In addition to his research endeavours, Dr Mallows contributes to the UCL Institute of Education's MA TESOL program, leading the English Language Teaching Classroom Practice module. His research interests and dedication to adult education make him a supportive advisor for PhD students in related fields.

Keynote Presentation (2023): Digital Literacy and Digital Inclusion: Reading the Digital World
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 IAFOR. He is Chair of the Arts, Humanities, Media & Culture division of the International Academic Advisory Board.

Plenary Presentation (2023): There Is No New Normal
Raquel Medina
Aston University, United Kingdom

Biography

Raquel Medina is a visiting research fellow at Aston University and Dean of Area Studies at IES Abroad Barcelona. She is the author of Cinematic Representations of Alzheimer’s Disease and Surrealismo en la poesía española de posguerra. She has served as co-editor of Sexualidad y escritura Envejecimientos y cines ibéricos, Tecnologías de la edad and The Bloomsbury Handbook to Ageing in Contemporary Literature and Film. She has published numerous articles, book chapters, and reviews on cultural representations of ageing and dementia, contemporary Spanish poetry, women writers, film, and cultural studies. She is the director of the research network CinemAGEnder and co-director of the Dementia and Cultural Narrative Network.

Featured Panel Presentation (2023) | Contemporary Cultural Representations of Ageing: Deconstructing Ageism
Inesa Shevchenko
University of Lleida, Spain

Biography

Inesa Shevchenko holds a master’s degree in Secondary Education Teacher Training and Language Teaching from the University of Lleida (Catalonia, Spain). She is currently developing her doctoral thesis on the representations of female ageing in contemporary dramatic texts mainly by English-speaking playwrights, and which is supervised by Dr Núria Casado-Gual, with whom she has co-authored several articles and scientific communications presented at national and international conferences. Her research interests include cultural gerontology, theatre, gender, and LGBTQ+ studies. Member of the European Network of Ageing Studies (ENAS), Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN), The Institute for Social and Territorial Development (INDEST), and the research groups CELCA and Dedal-Lit (UdL), she co-teaches as an adjunct lecturer at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Lleida.

Featured Panel Presentation (2023) | Contemporary Cultural Representations of Ageing: Deconstructing Ageism
Kateřina Valentová
University of Lleida, Spain

Biography

Kateřina Valentová holds a PhD in the Territory, Heritage and Culture program of the University de Lleida (2018). Her doctoral thesis focused on the value of nonverbal elements in naturalist texts of Spanish and French tradition. She works as an assistant lecturer at the University of Lleida, in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures where she teaches Comparative Literature, Autobiography, and Creative Writing. She is an active member of the European Network of Ageing Studies (ENAS) and her research focuses on comics studies, and life writing. Currently she is participating in a research project on ageing at the University of Lleida.

Featured Panel Presentation (2023) | Contemporary Cultural Representations of Ageing: Deconstructing Ageism