Eaquals 30th Anniversary Conference April 2021, Belfast, United Kingdom

Alan Maley

Alan Maley’s career in English Language Teaching began with The British Council in 1962.  He worked for the Council in Yugoslavia, Ghana, Italy, France, PR China and India over a period of 26 years.  In 1988, he became Director-General of the Bell Educational Trust in Cambridge (1988-93).  He then took up the post of Senior Fellow in the Department of English, National University of Singapore. His last full-time post was as Dean and Professor of the Institute for English Language Education, Assumption University, Bangkok, where he set up new MA programmes.  Since retiring in 2004, he has occupied a number of visiting professorial posts at Leeds Metropolitan, Nottingham, Durham, Malaysia (UKM), Vietnam (OU-HCMC) and Germany (Universitat Augsburg).

He has published extensively and was series editor for the Oxford Resource Books for Teachers for over 20 years. He remains active as a speaker at national and international conferences. While at Bell, he was involved in the infancy of EAQUALS. He was a co-founder of The Extensive Reading Foundation, and of The C group: Creativity for Change in Language Education.  He is a past-President of IATEFL, and was given the ELTons Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

Alan Pulverness

A Director of TransformELT and Senior Consultant for NILE. Co-author of course books including the award-winning Macmillan Short Course Programme and The TKT Course. Has worked extensively on curriculum renewal, materials development, reader development and trainer training. Editor of IATEFL Conference Selections (2000-2004) and co-chair of the British Council Literature Conference (2002-2006).

Alan S. Mackenzie

Alan S. Mackenzie spent 25 years in Asia in teaching, training and project management. This year, as a Director of TransformELT, he has been involved in projects in Sri Lanka, Ukraine, West Africa, and France. He is a project designer, manager, and monitoring and evaluation specialist. He is module leader for the NILE MA module in Developing Autonomy.

Alex Cann & Sian Hanson

Alex is Customer Experience Director at British Study Centres where he plays a key role in their customer experience programme, initiatives and strategy. He is passionate about staff development and strives to enhance his students’ experience at every step of their journey.

Sian Hanson

Alex Throp

Alex Thorp is the Lead Academic, Language (Europe) at Trinity College London. He previously gained over 15 years’ experience heading a teacher training department in the UK. With special interests in English Language assessment, CLIL, neurolinguistics and educational psychology, he publishes and presents the world over with the aim of supporting best practices in language teaching and testing.

Alex Warren

Alex Warren  is a DELTA trained teacher trainer with over 16 years’ experience in ELT as a teacher, academic director and teacher trainer, working for National Geographic Learning. Alex has presented in over 35 countries on a wide range of ELT-related topics, all the while driven by his passion for developing teachers on a global scale and helping them to reach their true potential.

Angelos Evangelidis & Maria Davou

Maria Davou is a school owner, teacher, teacher trainer and researcher. She has a BA in Philosophy, DELTA, MA in TESOL, now completing her PhD in Athens. She has more than twenty-five years’ experience in Greece, the UK and the US. She is a language school owner in Athens, promoting alternative models of teaching. She is an international trainer, academic consultant and a university professor.

Angelos is currently a Master’s student at the University of Amsterdam for the Research in the Literary Studies program. He is a published novel author, a musician and a lover of literature, cinema and art. He is bilingual, loves communication, and fun activities and believes language learning is a natural process that should be done in enjoyable ways. He has been teaching in Glossomatheia since 2011 and he has conceptualized, designed, and developed Deeper Learning and coordinates it for Glossomatheia and other schools around Greece.

Anja Peters

Anja Peters studied English language and literature in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. and was awarded a PhD from Southampton University. After lecturing at U.K. universities and working as examiner for Cambridge Assessment, she joined the TestDaF-Institut in 2018. Her responsibilities include the production of writing tasks, rater training and the development of training and preparation materials.

Arum Perwitasari

Arum Perwitasari holds a PhD in Linguistics from Leiden University and works as an Academic Relations Specialist at ETS Global, Netherlands. Her research interest includes speech recognition, second language acquisition and bilingualism. Arum is an experienced educator and a certified trainer for the TOEFL iBT® and Young Students Series workshops.

Ben Beaumont

Ben Beaumont is Head of TESOL Qualifications at Trinity College London and has an interest in developing pre and in-service support for teachers to help promote effective learning and teaching. Having moved between ELT and generic state sector teacher education roles, Ben is keen to help share best practice between sectors and support teacher development in general.

Burcu Cubukcu

Burcu Cubukcu has been working as the ELT Academic Specialist at Terakki Foundation Schools in İstanbul for many years. She graduated from Bogazici University, Western Languages, and Literature Department and has a master’s degree in Educational Management afterward. She holds a Cambridge Delta certificate(curriculum writing) and has extensive experience in the field.

Chia Suan Chong

Chia Suan Chong is a writer, communication skills trainer and a teacher trainer. She was English Teaching Professional’s award-winning resident blogger from 2012 to 2019. Based in York, Chia trains both online and face-to-face clients in communication skills, with a focus on intercultural skills and soft skills.

Chris Farrell

Chris Farrell is Head of Teacher Development with the Centre of English Studies group. He is Head of the Celta Centre in CES Dublin and is a Delta trainer. He is a committe member with TDSIG and is the founder and project coordinator of the Irish Research Scheme for Teaching.

Christina Nicole Giannikas

Christina Giannikas holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics in the field of early language learning. She is the QLS Academic partner and Project editor, an Instructor at Cyprus University of Technology and a Pre-service teacher trainer for the Department of Education of the University of Cyprus. She is also a freelance educational consultant, author and editor of print and digital ELT material.

Conrad Heyns

Conrad Heyns is the Director of the Language Centre at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is an Eaquals inspector, an IHWO inspector and the current Chair of the BALEAP Accreditation Scheme.
He is also a judge for the British Council ELTons and the English Speaking Union Duke of Edinburgh Awards.
He has particular interests in intercultural communication and the student experience in HE.

Cristina Manea Gultekin

Cristina Manea is a teacher trainer holding an MA in ELT, Sabanci University’ SLTEP and Pilgrims’ teacher trainer certificates. She has been teaching English and French for 19 years and her main interest is researching best practices that make CPD effective.

David Coarsey

David Coarsey is the founder and CEO of Guided e-Learning (GEL), industry leader in the provision of digital EFL education and quality management systems.  GEL has a content partnership with Oxford University Press and supports organisations across the world including the British Council, ELS, and EC English.  Because GEL works with a wide range of quality English language institutes, David has a unique and privileged view of digital trends in schools.  david@gelnet.com

Dr. Cristina Perez Guillot

Dr. Cristina Pérez-Guillot, received her PhD from the Universitat Politècnica de València in 2003, she is currently Senior Lecturer of Business English at Universitat Politècnica de València, Department of Applied Linguistic, Head of Language Centre of The Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain). President of ACLES (Asociación Española de Centros de Lenguas de Enseñanza Superior).

Duncan Foord

Duncan Foord is the Director of OxfordTEFL, Barcelona. He has 30 years experience in language teaching, teacher training and school leadership and management. He is the author of “From English Teacher to Learner Coach” (with Dan Barber, The Round 2014) The Developing Teacher (Delta Publishing, 2009) . He is lead trainer on the OxfordTEFL Leadership in ELT course.

Elisabeth Butler

Elisabeth Butler

I am a teacher of French, Spanish and German in Ireland, currently working as a teacher trainer with preservice as well as inservice teachers. I have recently completed my M.A . in Applied Linguistics and my particular interests are language pedagogy, assessment, curriculum development and cooperative learning.

Elisabeth Butler & Mary-Elaine Tynan

Elisabeth Butler is an MFL advisor working with a national support service to support teachers in enacting the new curriculum in schools.

Mary Elaine Tynan works for the National council for Curriculum and assessment in Ireland, leading the Development Group for the new curricular languages in the upper secondary curriculum in Ireland (Polish, Lithuanian, Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese).

Frederic Borne

30+ years of business experience

• 12 years advising companies as a consultant and CEO of various marketing, strategy and change management consulting firms.
• 17 years as the CEO of IH Madrid: an EAQUALS member with 7 language schools, a teacher training institution, a study abroad agency and an examination center for Pearson, Cambridge (platinum), IELTS and Instituto Cervantes.
• Since 2018, head of Business Development for PeopleCert (LanguageCert).

Master in Management from EDHEC Business School, France.

George Pickering

George Pickering is an educational coach, trainer and consultant, who has delivered talks and workshops in over 65 different countries. George is the academic director of the English UK Diploma in English Language Teaching Management (DELTM). He is a senior inspector of language schools for the British Council (Accreditation UK). He was a trustee of IATEFL for 12 years.

Gillian Davidson & David Byrne

Gillian Davidson is Academic Director of EC English, she taught in Slovakia, Indonesia, Russia and the UK as a teacher and a manager. She is a member of the Product Development team for EC English.

David Byrne  is the Curriculum Manager at EC. He’s worked in EFL as both teacher and manager, in Spain, Korea and the UK, In his spare time he writes materials and a blog called Textploitation. He is a member of the Product Development team for EC English.

Herbert Gerzer

My name is Herbert Gerzer and I run a highly creative Digital Marketing Agency for language schools and education providers.
I have over 12 years of experience in the language training industry, from teaching, to sales, to marketing. Now I help language schools attract new customers and sell more language courses through paid ad campaigns.

Ian Brangan & Patrick Creed

Ian Brangan is an Academic Director, ELT Consultant, Curricula & Materials Developer, QQI & Eaquals Inspector of Schools, TIE examiner, CELT Trainer. He runs Teacher Training & Development Courses through ActualiseELT.

Patrick Creed is the owner of an EAQUALS member school, QQI Inspector of Schools, Cambridge & TIE examiner, and CELT Trainer.

They run Teacher Training & Development Courses through ActualiseELT

Jenny Johnson

Jenny has been involved in academic management for many years. She started her ELT career at International House in Barcelona as a teacher, then Director of Studies, Head of English, teacher trainer and Head of Teacher Training, before returning to the UK, where she has worked as Academic Director for Cactus Language Training, Brighton and Academic Manager at ELC Eastbourne. Jenny has spent many years as a volunteer in various roles for IATEFL, including Coordinator of the Teacher Trainers and Educators and the Leadership and Management Special Interest Groups and Representative for SIGS on the IATEFL Coordinating Committee. Jenny passed the IDLTM (International Diploma in Language Teaching Management) with Distinction and she was awarded a Distinction in the Masters in ELT from the University of Sussex.

Joanne Murphy

Dr Murphy is the Interim Director of the William J. Clinton Leadership Institute and a Senior Lecturer in Queen’s Management School. Her research explores leadership, change and organisational development in politically volatile environments. She has written extensively on policing, organisational change and conflict diplomacy.

Joanne holds a PhD from the School of Business, Trinity College, Dublin and is a frequent contributor to national and international media outlets in the areas of leadership, change and resilience. She is a Fellow of the Senator George Mitchell Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice (QUB) and Chair of the British Academy of Management’s Organisational Transformation Change and Development Special Interest Group. Joanne’s research has been published in world leading management and political science journals. She is the author of two books: Public Management and Complexity Theory (2011); Policing for Peace in Northern Ireland: Change, Conflict and Community Confidence (2013). Her new book Managing at the Extremes: Leadership and Change in Conflict and Transition is forthcoming in 2020.

Jonathan Dykes

Jonathan Dykes has been working in the language teaching industry most of his professional life. He was the founder of a number of language schools (both physical and online) in various different countries and has been on the Board of IHWO for several years. He was also responsible for introducing an environmental policy in IH Barcelona 12 years ago, so has a good deal of experience in this area.

Julie Wallis & Palmina La Rosa

As a school director Julie Wallis manages a permanent staff of 25 with a management team. I have extensive experience in leadership and management and have delivered workshops for Eaquals, AISLi, NILE, Pilgrims and Bell.

Palmina La Rosa, a qualified leadership coach, is the president of AISLi, Italy following her experience as Director of Operations. She is director of IH GIGA, Italy.

Justin Quinn

Eaquals Chair

Justin Quinn is Managing Director of CES Centre of English Studies, with eight year-round schools. He has worked in the English Language sector for 26 years in Ireland, Taiwan and the UK. He studied Construction Economics in Dublin Institute of Technology and Stanford University Graduate Business School.

Justin has served on the board of Marketing English in Ireland (MEI) and ACELS (Advisory Council for English Language School ) and was the sector representative on the Irish Government Internationalisation of Education.

Khadidja Guerrab

Khadidja Guerrab is the General Manager of IN-tuition Languages & Exams, Algeria, having been involved in the ELT education for more than 14 years as an English teacher, Academic manager and School principal. She has a BA in English Literature and civilization from Algiers University, Cert IBET, Trinity London, MA in Business Management, Paris Dauphine and holds an Executive MBA from Sorbonne Business School, France .She is a Certified Dale Carnegie trainer for the ”Skills for Success Communication”

Kristof Hegedus

Kristóf is responsible for academic development at Euroexam International, which includes both the development of Euroexam’s range of tests and also training programmes for prospective test takers, such as e-learning exam preparation courses.
Besides having taught English for 25 years, Kristóf leads the team of exam developers for the Hungarian National Matura in English language.

Laura Paterson

Laura Paterson taught English as a foreign language in Oxford before joining ELT Assessment at Oxford University Press in 2012. She has been a Senior Assessment Manager since 2015, working on the development and management of the Oxford Test of English proficiency test and the Oxford Online Placement Test. Laura also holds an MA in Language Testing

Leonardo Mercado

My experience as a teacher, academic director, project manager, certified rater, and teacher trainer extends for more than 25 years. As an international author/co-author, I have written on a wide variety of topics and presented extensively at international conferences, including IATEFL and TESOL. In the area of accreditation, I led a successful process with the CEA and now lead one with EAQUALS.

Leonor Marín

Leo studied Education, Post Graduate on ‘Curriculum and Syllabus Design’ at Saint Mary’s University, Study Skills at Lancaster University, Minedu & British Council Experimental Material Project .
Presentations in Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, UK and this year in Spain at EQUALS 2019.
Currently works as a freelance, Past Iatefl-Peru President and she is doing research on ‘Balance between Life & Work’

Liam Brown

Liam is a manager, trainer, writer and consultant focusing on business communication, collaborative learning, management and decision making.
Based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, he works independently as Liam Brown Training with ELT and education institutions around the world.
He designs and delivers intensive and “bitesize” soft skills learning programmes and management and staff “Awaydays”.

Liliana O'Reilly

Liliana O’Reilly is a senior quality officer in charge of developing and managing the work plans and resources relating to English language and transnational programmes in QQI. Managing the legacy ACELS scheme and project managing the development and introduction of the International Education Mark for English language education are two of her main areas of responsibility in QQI.

Loraine Kennedy

Loraine works as an independent leadership consultant, trainer and ICF certified coach. She has extensive experience working with English language schools, tertiary education, the public sector and the business world across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. She is also a committee member of IATEFL LAMSIG.

Matthew Benton

Matthew Benton is Director of Foreign Languages at Bahcesehir College, a private Turkish K-12 school system with over 130 locations. A leader in the field of ELT, over the past two decades Matthew has worked as a teacher, curriculum developer, editor and writer, ELT publishing project director, and senior manager. He is based in Istanbul and a long-time member of Eaquals.

Meltem Akpınar Yılmaz

My name is Meltem Akpınar Yılmaz and I have been working as an English instructor at Özyeğin University since 2016. I received my BA degree in ELT from Çukurova University in 2009 and my MA degree in Educational Administration and Planning from İstanbul Kültür University in 2018. I also hold CELTA from Cambridge University. Besides, I have been delivering drama sessions in my institution

Niall Curry

Niall Curry is a Lecturer in Academic Writing at the Centre for Academic Writing at Coventry University. He has been actively engaged in both teaching and research for many years and his teaching covers a range of topics in applied linguistics and language pedagogy. His research crosses many fields, including language teaching and learning, digital pedagogy, English medium instruction, corpus linguistics, and academic discourse. He is a co-editor of the Journal of Academic Writing and he holds a PhD in corpus and contrastive linguistics from the University of Limerick. For further details on his background, areas of interest, projects, and current research, see his website.

Nicholas Gossett

Nick Gossett, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Russian at the University of South Alabama where he is the Russian language program director, the Director of the Language Resource Center, and the coordinator for the minor in Applied Linguistics. He received his PhD from The University of Texas at Austin in Applied Linguistics. He has over a decade of experience in the field of language assessment.

Nigel Pike

Nigel is an assessment consultant working as the Qualifications Development Manager at LanguageCert. He has extensive experience teaching young learners and has worked in language assessment for over 25 years, including 20 years at Cambridge English where he was Director of Assessment.

Özlem Kaplan

Özlem Kaplan has been the line manager of one of the teaching units in Özyeğin University School of Languages for four years. She graduated from Bilkent University (English Language and Literature) in 2006, started working there as an instructor in 2006, got her DELTA and MA (Management in Education, Bilkent Uni) in 2012 and has been working at Ozyegin University since then.

Patrick Creed

Patrick Creed is the owner of an EAQUALS member school, QQI Inspector of Schools, Cambridge & TIE examiner, and CELT Trainer. He runs Teacher Training & Development Courses through ActualiseELT

Peter Lahiff

Peter is an experienced course designer, teacher trainer and academic manager who has
worked in the English language teaching for 20 years. He is the founding Academic Director of
Future Learning Language School and works on the development and management of
technology enhanced summer language courses for young learners from all around the world
which take place in Ireland and internationally.

Philippe Taza

As the CEO of Higher Education Marketing, Philippe provides digital marketing solutions in over 14 different languages for a number of language schools across the globe. His company’s specialised services include SEO, paid advertising campaigns, content development, social media marketing, analytics management, CRM technology, and more.

Professor Ema Ushioda

I have been working in language education and language teacher education since 1982, and have taught in Japan, Ireland and the UK. I obtained my PhD in 1996 from Trinity College, Dublin, where I also coordinated a research-and-development project to set up institution-wide language programmes, and then pursued postdoctoral research funded by Atlantic Philanthropies to promote language learner autonomy in Irish secondary schools. This project involved designing and evaluating a version of the Council of Europe’s European Language Portfolio. I moved to Warwick in 2002 where I have been teaching primarily on our MA and PhD courses. I became Director of Graduate Studies in 2013, before taking up the role of Director of the Centre in September 2018.

Rod Bolitho & Richard Rossner

Rod Bolitho is a freelance ELT consultant and former Academic Director at NILE. He has co-authored books, including Continuing Professional Development 2018, (with Amol Padwad), and Language Education in a Changing World (with Richard Rossner, forthcoming).

Richard Rossner was a cofounder and a former Director and Chair of Eaquals. He is an author and a member of an ECML project team.

Shaun Wilden

Shaun Wilden had been involved in English language teaching for over twenty-five years. He is the Academic Head of training and development for the International House World Organisation and a tutor at the University of Oxford. His book “Mobile Learning” was published in 2017 by OUP. He is a trustee of IATEFL. For a hobby he makes the TEFL commute podcast for teachers.

Silvana Richardson

Silvana Richardson is Head of Teacher Development at Bell, Academic Director of Bell Teacher Campus and Programme Quality Manager at The Bell Foundation. She has over 30 years of experience working in the EFL, ESOL, EAL and MFL fields in various roles- teacher, teacher trainer, academic manager, trainer trainer, quality assurance inspector, consultant, writer, speaker at international conferences.

Sue Hackett

Sue Hackett has been involved in language education as a trainer, manager, curriculum designer, learning assessment and quality assurance expert for more than 30 years. She has recently been undertaking research into the impact of PD initiatives. She works for Quality and Qualifications Ireland, the national agency with the remit for the quality assurance of all post secondary education.

Susanna Dammann

I have been a member of the Eaquals ‘family’ since 2002 as a corporate (IHW) and then as an individual member. I managed the Eaquals Inspection Scheme and oversaw the revision of the Scheme for Version 7.1.
I am fascinated by the way language learning happens and how teachers can help it to happen.