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EGen2024

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2024 Conference Report

June 11-15, 2024 | SOAS & University College London, UK

As part of our European summer conference series, IAFOR was in London this past July to host The 12th European Conference on Education (ECE2024), The 12th European Conference on Language Learning (ECLL2024), The 12th European Conference on Arts & Humanities (ECAH2024), and The 4th European Conference on Aging and Gerontology (EGen2024). Featuring an open and interdisciplinary two days of plenary sessions, 672 delegates from 84 countries joined this intellectual exchange, held at University College London (UCL), the University of Sussex, and SOAS University of London, and in partnership with UCL, Birkbeck, University of London; the European Center for Peace and Development (ECPD) of the United Nations University for Peace (UPEACE), and the IAFOR Research Center at Osaka University.

At this conference, the IAFOR International Academic Board met to ratify themes to drive the programme, announcing four key themes slated to shape our conferences and steer academic discussions for the next five years (2025-2029). The selected themes are Technology and Artificial Intelligence, Humanity and Human Intelligence, Global Citizenship, and Education for Peace and Leadership. These themes can be seen as standalone concepts, but they are also in interdisciplinary communication with each other, as the London conference has demonstrated. With the interdisciplinary approach of the plenary sessions, the keynote speakers’ and panellists’ presentations formed a narrative of how technological advancement, education, and institutions influence power dynamics, which in turn defines what it means to be human.

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Conference Report
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Speakers

  • Anne Boddington
    Anne Boddington
    Kingston University, UK
  • Grant Black
    Grant Black
    Chuo University, Japan
  • Praminda Caleb-Solly
    Praminda Caleb-Solly
    University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
  • Evangelia Chrysikou
    Evangelia Chrysikou
    University College London, UK
  • Alfonso J. García-Osuna
    Alfonso J. García-Osuna
    Hofstra University, United States
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Donald E. Hall
    Donald E. Hall
    Binghamton University, USA
  • Brendan Howe
    Brendan Howe
    Ewha Womans University, South Korea
  • David Mallows
    David Mallows
    UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom
  • Ljiljana Marković
    Ljiljana Marković
    European Centre for Peace and Development (ECPD), United Nations’ University for Peace
  • James W. McNally
    James W. McNally
    University of Michigan & NACDA Program on Aging, United States
  • Cian O’Donovan
    Cian O’Donovan
    University College London (UCL), United Kingdom
  • Ana Pellicer-Sánchez
    Ana Pellicer-Sánchez
    UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom
  • Neelam Raina
    Neelam Raina
    Middlesex University, United Kingdom
  • Marcelo Staricoff
    Marcelo Staricoff
    University of Sussex, United Kingdom

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Programme

  • Providing Access to Higher Education for Refugees: Challenges and Benchmarks
    Providing Access to Higher Education for Refugees: Challenges and Benchmarks
    Keynote Presentation: Brendan Howe
  • The Joy of Not Knowing and Why It’s So Brilliant to Not Know!
    The Joy of Not Knowing and Why It’s So Brilliant to Not Know!
    Keynote Presentation: Marcelo Staricoff
  • Educating for Peace: Conflicting Narratives, Migration, Immigration and Global Citizenship
    Educating for Peace: Conflicting Narratives, Migration, Immigration and Global Citizenship
    Plenary Panel Discussion: Donald E. Hall, Brendan Howe, Ljiljana Marković, Anne Boddington
  • Helping Us to Help Ourselves – How Assistive Robots and AI Can Change the Dynamics of Supporting Healthy Ageing and Social Care
    Helping Us to Help Ourselves – How Assistive Robots and AI Can Change the Dynamics of Supporting Healthy Ageing and Social Care
    Keynote Presentation: Praminda Caleb-Solly
  • The Examination of Eye Movements in Language Learning Research: A Focus on Vocabulary
    The Examination of Eye Movements in Language Learning Research: A Focus on Vocabulary
    Keynote Presentation: Ana Pellicer-Sánchez
  • How to Destroy a University
    How to Destroy a University
    Keynote Presentation: Donald E. Hall
  • Humanities at the Helm: Mobilising Scholars to Confront the Planetary Climate Crisis
    Humanities at the Helm: Mobilising Scholars to Confront the Planetary Climate Crisis
    Keynote Presentation: Alfonso J. García-Osuna
  • Invisiblised and Erased Narratives – Essential Views from the Margins
    Invisiblised and Erased Narratives – Essential Views from the Margins
    Keynote Presentation: Neelam Raina
  • Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Democracy
    Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Democracy
    Keynote Presentation: Cian O’Donovan
  • AI and Education
    AI and Education
    Keynote Presentation: David Mallows
  • An Introduction to the IAFOR Undergraduate Research Symposium (IURS)
    An Introduction to the IAFOR Undergraduate Research Symposium (IURS)
    Special Seminar Session: Grant Black, James W. McNally

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Conference Committees

Global Programme Committee

Dr Joseph Haldane, IAFOR and Osaka University, Japan, & University College London, United Kingdom
Professor Jun Arima, President, IAFOR & University of Tokyo, Japan
Professor Anne Boddington, Executive Vice-President and Provost, IAFOR & Middlesex University, United Kingdom
Professor Barbara Lockee, Virginia Tech, United States
Professor Donald E. Hall, Binghamton University, United States
Dr James W. McNally, University of Michigan, United States & NACDA Program on Aging
Dr Grant Black, Chuo University, Japan
Professor Dexter Da Silva, Keisen University, Japan
Professor Baden Offord, Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia & Cultural Studies Association of Australasia
Professor Frank S. Ravitch, Michigan State University College of Law, United States
Professor William Baber, Kyoto University, Japan

Members of the IAFOR Board of Directors and The Academic Governing Board are standing members of the Global Programme Committee.

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Conference Programme Committee

Conference Chair

Evangelia Chrysikou
Evangelia Chrysikou
Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction
University College London
United Kingdom

Conference Programme Committee Members

Jane Biddulph, University College London, United Kingdom
Dimitrios Buhalis, Bournemouth University Business School, United Kingdom
Dorina Cadar, Brighton & Sussex Medical School, United Kingdom
Stefano Capolongo, Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy
Carina Dantes, SHINE 2Europe, Portugal
Eddy Davelaar, Birkbeck, University of London, United Kingdom
Isaiah Durosaiye, School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Joseph Falzon, Centre for Research & Innovation, Malta
Ava Fatah, Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, United Kingdom
Dr Joseph Haldane, IAFOR and Osaka University, Japan, & University College London, United Kingdom (Conference Co-chair)
Paul Higgs, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London, United Kingdom
Fernando Loizides, School of Computer Science & Informatics, Cardiff University, United Kingdom
Elena Petelos, Faculty of Medicine, University of Crete, Greece & Faculty of Health, Medicine & Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Netherlands
Eleftheria Savvopoulou, SynThesis Architects, Greece
Anastasios Tellios, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Greg Williams, University of Manchester, United Kingdom

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Conference Review Committee

Professor Kar Him Mo, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Dr Tengku Amatullah Madeehah Tengku Mohd, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Malaysia
Dr Hoangnam Tran, Tokushima University, Japan
Dr Adi Vitman-Schorr, Shamir Research Institute, University of Haifa, Israel
Dr Lu Wang, Hebei University of Technology, China

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Event Partners

The European Conference on Aging & Gerontology (EGen) is run in partnership with The Bartlett Real Estate Institute at UCL, The National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA) at the University of Michigan, USA, and the IAFOR Research Centre at Osaka University.

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Event Supporters

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IAFOR's Conference Themes for 2025-2029

Our selected themes for 2025-2029 bring together ideas and encourage research and synergies in the following areas:

  • Technology and Artificial Intelligence
  • Humanity and Human Intelligence
  • Global Citizenship and Education for Peace
  • Leadership

    • Our four themes can be seen as standalone themes, but they are also very much in conversation with each other. Themes may be seen as corollaries, complementary, or in opposition/juxtaposition with each other. The themes can be considered as widely as possible and are designed, in keeping with our mission, to encourage ideas across the disciplines.

    Anne Boddington
    Kingston University, UK

    Biography

    Anne Boddington is Professor of Design Innovation, Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, Business and Innovation at Kingston University in the UK and recently appointed as the Sub Panel Chair for Art & Design: History, Practice & Theory for the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021. Professor Boddington has extensive experience of the leadership, management and evaluation of art and design education and art and design research in higher education across the UK and internationally. She is an experienced chair and has held trustee and governance roles across the creative and cultural sector including as trustee of the Design Council, an independent Governor, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), an affiliate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), a member of the executive of the Council for Higher Education in Art & Design (CHEAD) and a member of the advisory board of the Arts & Humanities Research Council. She has an international reputation in creative education and research and has been a partner, a collaborator, a reviewer and evaluator for a wide range of international projects and reviews across different nations in Europe, the Middle East, Southern and east Asia and North America.

    Grant Black
    Chuo University, Japan

    Biography

    Professor Grant Black is a professor in the Faculty of Commerce at Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan, where he has taught Global Skills and Global Issues since 2013. Grant is engaged in diverse roles as a global manager, systems builder, executive leader and university professor. His research and teaching areas include global management skills, intercultural intelligence (CQ) and organisational management. He also has taught Japanese Management Theory at J. F. Oberlin University (Japan), and a continuing education course in the Foundations of Japanese Zen Buddhism at Temple University Japan. Previously, he was Chair of the English Section at the Center for Education of Global Communication at the University of Tsukuba where he served in a six-year post in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. He holds a BA Highest Honors in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara; an MA in Japanese Buddhist Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles; and a Doctor of Social Science (DSocSci) from the Department of Management in the School of Business at the University of Leicester. Dr Black is a Chartered Manager (CMgr), the highest status that can be achieved in the management profession in the UK. In 2018, he was elected a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute (FCMI) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). Grant is President of Black Inc. Consulting (Japan), a Tokyo-based firm specialising in international and intercultural project management, communication projects, and executive leadership and training. He is the director of the Nippon Academic Management Institute (NAMI) and the author of Education Reform Policy at a Japanese Super Global University: Policy Translation, Migration and Mutation (Routledge, 2022). He serves as a Vice-President for the International Academic Forum (IAFOR).

    Special Seminar Session (2024) | An Introduction to the IAFOR Undergraduate Research Symposium (IURS)
    Praminda Caleb-Solly
    University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

    Biography

    Praminda Caleb-Solly is Professor of Embodied Intelligence at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, where she leads the Cyber-physical Health and Assistive Robotics Technologies research group. She holds degrees in Electronic Systems Engineering, Biomedical Instrumentation Engineering, and a PhD in Interactive Evolutionary Computation. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Head of Electronics and Computer Systems at Designability, an assistive technology SME. In 2020, she co-founded Robotics for Good CIC, a start-up to enable deployment of leading-edge intelligent robotics and smart technology solutions that seek to empower people in their everyday lives.

    Professor Caleb-Solly’s academic publications cover machine learning and human-robot interaction. She also co-authored the UK-Robotics and Autonomous Systems White Paper on Robotics in Social Care: A Connected Care EcoSystem for Independent Living; and gave evidence to the UK House of Lords’ Science and Technology Committee inquiry into Ageing: Science, Technology and Healthy Living. She is currently leading an EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Network, Facilitating the Emergence of Healthcare Robots from Labs into Service, and also serves as a member of the British Standards Institute’s Technical Committees on Service Robot Safety and Ethics.

    Keynote Presentation (2024) | Helping Us to Help Ourselves – How Assistive Robots and AI Can Change the Dynamics of Supporting Healthy Ageing and Social Care
    Evangelia Chrysikou
    University College London, UK

    Biography

    Dr Evangelia Chrysikou is a registered architect and senior research fellow at UCL. She owns the award-winning SynThesis Architects (London – Athens), that specialises in medical facilities. Her work received prestigious awards (Singapore 2009, Kuala Lumpur 2012, Brisbane 2013, Birmingham 2014, London 2014). Parallel activities include teaching at medical and architectural schools, research (UK, France, Belgium, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Greece and the Middle East) and advisory. She advised the Hellenic Secretary of Health and is the author of the new national guidelines for mental health facilities. Dr Chrysikou is the author of the book ‘Architecture for Psychiatric Environments and Therapeutic Spaces’, healthcare architecture editor, reviewer, active member of several professional and scientific associations and a TED-MED speaker. She is a Trustee, Member of the Board and Director of Research at DIMHN (UK) and Member of the Board at the Scholar’s Association Onassis Foundation.

    Featured Interview (2022) | Featured Interview with Miriam Weber, WHO European Healthy Cities Network Chair for Utrecht, Netherlands
    Alfonso J. García-Osuna
    Hofstra University, United States

    Biography

    Alfonso J. García-Osuna has taught at Hofstra University and at City University of NY-Kingsborough for over 35 years. He specialises in mediaeval and early modern literature, receiving his PhD (1989) from the Graduate School of the City University of New York. He has completed postdoctoral work at the University of Valladolid, Spain, has published six books, and is a frequent contributor to specialised journals. Additionally, Dr García-Osuna is the editor of the IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities.

    Alfonso received primary and secondary education in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, the place where his family originated and where he grew up. An avid cyclist, he has completed the Road to Santiago, an 867-kilometre route through northern Spain, eight times.

    Keynote Presentation (2024) | Humanities at the Helm: Mobilising Scholars to Confront the Planetary Climate Crisis
    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 international business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

    Dr Haldane is a founding Co-Director of the IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP), Osaka University, where since 2015 he has also been a Guest Professor, teaching on the postgraduate Global Governance Course.

    A Member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for Global Governance, Professor Haldane’s research and teaching is on history, politics, international affairs and international education, as well as governance and decision making.

    In 2020 Dr Haldane was appointed Honorary Professor of UCL (University College London), through the Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management. He also holds Visiting Professorships in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, and at the School of Business at Doshisha University in Kyoto, where he teaches Ethics and Governance on the MBA programme. He is a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

    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, Sciences Po Paris, and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business, as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas, The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris, and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

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

    Donald E. Hall
    Binghamton University, USA

    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 the IAFOR Academic Governing Board.

    Keynote Presentation (2024) | The Work of the University in Perilous Times
    Brendan Howe
    Ewha Womans University, South Korea

    Biography

    Brendan Howe is Dean and Professor of the Graduate School of International Studies, Ewha Womans University, South Korea, where he has also served two terms as Associate Dean and Department Chair. He is also currently the President of the Asian Political and International Studies Association, and an Honorary Ambassador of Public Diplomacy and advisor for the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has held visiting professorships and research fellowships at the East-West Center (where he is currently enjoying a second term as a POSCO Visiting Research Fellow), the Freie Universität Berlin, De La Salle University, the University of Sydney, Korea National Defence University, Georgetown University, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, and Beijing Foreign Studies University.

    Educated at the University of Oxford, the University of Kent at Canterbury, Trinity College Dublin, and Georgetown University, his ongoing research agendas focus on traditional and non-traditional security in East Asia, human security, middle powers, public diplomacy, post-crisis development, comprehensive peacebuilding and conflict transformation. He has authored, co-authored, or edited around 100 related publications including Society and Democracy in South Korea and Indonesia (Palgrave, 2022), The Niche Diplomacy of Asian Middle Powers (Lexington Books, 2021), UN Governance: Peace and Human Security in Cambodia and Timor-Leste (Springer, 2020), Regional Cooperation for Peace and Development (Routledge, 2018), National Security, State Centricity, and Governance in East Asia (Springer, 2017), Peacekeeping and the Asia-Pacific (Brill, 2016), Democratic Governance in East Asia (Springer, 2015), Post-Conflict Development in East Asia (Ashgate, 2014), and The Protection and Promotion of Human Security in East Asia (Palgrave, 2013).

    Panel Presentation (2024) | TBA
    David Mallows
    UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom

    Biography

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

    In addition to his research activities, Dr Mallows currently contributes to the UCL Institute of Education's MA TESOL program, leading the English Language Teaching Classroom Practice module. He also supervises PhD students in the fields of adult education and academic writing.

    Keynote Presentation (2024) | AI and Education
    Ljiljana Marković
    European Centre for Peace and Development (ECPD), United Nations’ University for Peace

    Biography

    Ljiljana Marković is a Professor of Japanese Studies in the European Centre for Peace and Development (ECPD) of the United Nations University for Peace, and Special Advisor to the Executive Director and ECPD Academic Director. She is also a Visiting Professor at Toho University and Osaka University, Japan, and Gabriele d'Annunzio University, Italy.

    Professor Marković is the author of a large number of publications in the fields of Japanese Studies and Economics. She completed her bachelor’s and master's degrees at Cambridge University, United Kingdom, before pursuing her doctorate at Chuo University, Japan. For many years, she was a Professor at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, with terms as Dean (2016-2020) and Vice Dean of Financial Affairs (2008-2016). She has served as the Chairperson of the International Silk Road Academic Studies Symposium since 2017.

    Professor Marković received the Gaimu Daijin Sho Award from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan in 2010. In the following year, she received the Dositej Obradovic Award for Pedagogical Achievement. Professor Marković recent accolades include the Medal of Merit by the President of Serbia in 2020, the Isidora Sekulic Medal for Academic Achievement in 2021, and the Order of the Rising Sun (Gold Rays with Rosette) in 2022, an Imperial Decoration awarded by the Government of Japan for her "outstanding contribution to establishing and improving friendly relations with Japan”.

    Panel Presentation (2024) | TBA
    James W. McNally
    University of Michigan & NACDA Program on Aging, United States

    Biography

    Dr James W. McNally is the director of the NACDA Program on Aging, a research program funded by the US National Institutes of Health for almost 50 years. During his career, Dr McNally has routinely written multi-million dollar research applications. Consistently funded by agencies, including NIH, NSF, the MacArthur Foundation, and the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), he mentors graduate students and junior faculty in developing and maintaining a grant portfolio. Dr McNally is a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, a world-renowned organisation recognised for its leadership in survey development and independently funded research.

    Special Seminar Session (2024) | An Introduction to the IAFOR Undergraduate Research Symposium (IURS)

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    Workshop Presentation (2022) | NACDA: Data on Aging Resources from Research Ideation to Long-Term Preservation and Sharing
    Cian O’Donovan
    University College London (UCL), United Kingdom

    Biography

    Dr Cian O'Donovan is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at UCL, United Kingdom. He studies the policies and processes of AI, robotics, and digital change using social science-led interdisciplinary approaches. Dr O’Donovan collaborates with people directly impacted by innovation, such as organisations, industry professionals, and service-users in care sectors. He is currently leading research that investigates what happens when innovation appears in sectors usually neglected by technology policy or Silicon Valley, asking questions such as who really benefits from innovation in said sectors; who is driving and steering change within them, and what are the impacts of innovative intervention for people and the planet? Dr O’Donovan has been steadfast in his work to ensure this research contributes to public engagement and movement building that can challenge powerful interests in order to achieve a more sustainable and fairer world. In 2014, he co-founded Uplift, Ireland's largest digital advocacy organisation for progressive social change.

    Keynote Presentation (2024) | Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Democracy
    Ana Pellicer-Sánchez
    UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom

    Biography

    Dr Ana Pellicer-Sánchez is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at the Institute of Education in the Faculty of Education and Society University College London (UCL), United Kingdom. She is a member of the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics, where she conducts research on second language acquisition. Her research focuses on the teaching and learning of vocabulary in a second or foreign language. Recently, she has turned her focus on the use of eye-tracking technology to examine the cognitive processes involved in vocabulary learning when using different input conditions. Her work has appeared in international journals such as Language Learning, Language Teaching Research, Language Teaching, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, and The Modern Language Journal, among others. She is co-author of Eye-tracking in Applied Linguistics Research (2018), and co-editor of Understanding formulaic language: A second language acquisition perspective (2019). She has recently co-edited a special issue on “Eye-tracking in Vocabulary Research in Research Methods in Applied Linguistics” (2024).

    Dr Pellicer-Sánchez has participated in a number of national and international projects and committees, exploring the acquisition of English in different contexts. She has been the convenor of the Vocabulary Studies Special Interest Group of the British Association of Applied Linguistics (2018-2022) and the co-chair of the London Second Language Acquisition Research Forum (2019-2021). She is also a founding member of the British Council Eye-tracking Special Interest Group. Currently, she serves as associate editor of The Language Learning Journal, and as a member of the advisory board of various academic journals.

    Keynote Presentation (2024) | The Examination of Eye Movements in Language Learning Research: A Focus on Vocabulary
    Neelam Raina
    Middlesex University, United Kingdom

    Biography

    Dr Neelam Raina is an Associate Professor of Design and Development at Middlesex University, London. Her research interests include conflict, security, peace building, material cultures, gender, and livelihood generation in fragile, conflict affected states. Raina’s work explores notions of healing, trauma, peace and reflection through the embodied practices of making, using material culture and tacit knowledge as the underpinning for approaching violence and peace building and for sustainable income generation. Raina is a post conflict reconstruction expert with a focus on South Asia where she has conducted extensive empirical research over the last two decades. The Women, Peace and Security agenda is key to Neelam’s and her research seeks to foreground voices of vulnerable and marginalised women.

    Dr Raina has led several large-scale competitively funded research projects which examine material and social practices through which Muslim women in conflict areas reproduce themselves on a daily and generational basis, and through which the social relations and material bases of capitalism are renewed. Her work allows connections to be built between, creative home-based workers who are largely seen as peripheral, to development economics, and on the fringes of formal employment and contributors to GDP; to the larger notions of peace building, countering and preventing violent extremism, poverty spirals and conflict theory through culturally significant, socially relevant practices. She connects the British creative industry into solution-based impactful approaches to global challenges through research.

    Raina is a strong advocate for Afghan women and is the Director of the Secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Afghan women and girls in UK parliament. Her research in Afghanistan is ongoing as she brings women’s tacit knowledge to commercially viable spaces from the confines of the home.

    Raina has a PhD in Design and Development, and a Master’s in Design and Manufacture from De Montfort University, Leicester. From 2018-2021, she was the Challenge Leader for UKRI’s Conflict and Security Portfolio for the Global Challenges Research Fund. Raina has been a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security. She is the editor for the International Journal of Traditional Arts, and her new work Creative Economies of Culture in South Asia – Performers and Craftspeople was published in 2021.

    Keynote Presentation (2024) | TBA

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    Marcelo Staricoff
    University of Sussex, United Kingdom

    Biography

    Dr Marcelo Staricoff is a Lecturer in Education at the University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Marcelo is currently the joint Course Leader of the BA Primary and Early Years with QTS Course and will also take on the leadership of the Masters in Education Course from September 2024. He is the author of the book entitled The Joy of Not Knowing (Routledge, 2021), a publication on the Philosophy of Education Transforming Teaching, Thinking, Learning, and Leadership in Schools. A former scientist and primary school headteacher, Professor Staricoff has worked on behalf of UNICEF with policy makers, educators, and textbook publishers to implement a reformed national curriculum in Uzbekistan. He also works for the Coram Children’s Charity alongside implementing courses and advising several schools and educational organisations in the United Kingdom.

    Professor Staricoff speaks regularly at national and international events on the principles that underpin The Joy of Not Knowing’s philosophy of education and school leadership. He is also the author of its predecessor, Start Thinking (Imaginative Minds, 2005) and has published widely in the fields of creative, critical, multilingual, multicultural, and philosophical thinking and learning in the classroom. A member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Education (APPG), and Chair of the Michael Aldrich Foundation, Professor Staricoff’s work and his contributions to education have been widely recognised, being named as a Founding Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching in 2019 and through his assignment as a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2023.

    Keynote Presentation (2024) | The Joy of Not Knowing
    Providing Access to Higher Education for Refugees: Challenges and Benchmarks
    Keynote Presentation: Brendan Howe

    The global humanitarian crisis of refugee and forced migration flows is among the most pressing challenges to domestic and international governance. Securing access to higher education is among the most intractable challenges faced by refugees. Yet, securing higher education rights for refugees is critical not only for refugees’ self-empowerment, but also for the peaceful development of communities. Despite this, barriers remain prevalent. This research focuses on four of the most positive national governance provisions in Canada, Norway, and Australia, and the existing policy for access to higher education for North Korean refugees in South Korea. It is notable that these four countries are identified as middle powers, and middle powers often provide the impetus for global governance reform as an aspect of their niche diplomacy. Indeed, global governance reform represents a ‘noble opportunity’ for a middle power not only to aid the most vulnerable individuals and groups, but also raise its own prestige and influence on the international stage by complying with the norms of the liberal international order. Hence, the position of these case studies represent one of the most promising avenues for overcoming governance challenges related to both the humanitarian crisis and the transition to peaceful cosmopolitan societies.

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    The Joy of Not Knowing and Why It’s So Brilliant to Not Know!
    Keynote Presentation: Marcelo Staricoff

    Albert Einstein once said that as a teacher, he never taught his students; he just provided the conditions in which they could learn. In this practical and interactive session, we will argue that it is not enough to just create the conditions in which students are able to learn; we also need to create the conditions in which students are intrinsically motivated to want to learn. We will postulate that in order to create these conditions, we need to free students from the worry and anxiety that is usually associated with the process of learning, which inevitably places us in an emotionally uncomfortable position as we find ourselves in a state of not knowing, of being uncertain, and of finding things difficult. We will examine how, as educators, we can use the principles that underpin the Joy of Not Knowing (JONK) model of learning and philosophy of education to demonstrate how we can create learning environments where the students love not knowing and where the learning is co-constructed with the students. We will discuss how intrinsically motivated learners help to create classroom cultures where all students are keen to embrace the curriculum with enthusiasm and feel free to take risks with their creative, critical and philosophical thinking, seeking, rather than avoiding challenge and uncertainty, within a culture that provides them with all they require to be able to thrive socially, emotionally, culturally, and cognitively.

    This session will also discuss how the art of teaching is so dependent on this ability to create the conditions that enable students to feel comfortable with being uncomfortable. We will explore the idea that these conditions must be established prior to the beginning of any formal learning and demonstrate how this is achieved by dedicating the first week of the academic year to a Learning to Learn Week. We will also argue and use examples to demonstrate that students’ learning is at its best when students don’t realise that they are learning (the concept of dis-metacognition), when students are encouraged to access their learning using all the richness of language and culture that they bring with them (the concept of multilingual thinking in multicultural classrooms), where the learning is presented through an intellectually playful lens (the concept of the philosophical learning objective as part of classrooms that function as values and children’s rights-led, democratic, dialogic-rich communities of inquiry), where learners all feel equally valued and are able to develop a deep and lifelong love of learning (the concept of personalised models of learning and the lifelong learning dispositions), and where the purpose of education is at the heart of the teaching and learning process.

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    Educating for Peace: Conflicting Narratives, Migration, Immigration and Global Citizenship
    Plenary Panel Discussion: Donald E. Hall, Brendan Howe, Ljiljana Marković, Anne Boddington

    According to Plato, “those who tell and claim the stories, control the world”, and the stories we are told and tell are the flesh on the bones of power. The question is, who tells these stories today?

    Today, global conflicts, resource disputes, and cultural, ethnic, or religious tensions often result in catastrophic consequences for the marginalised ‘other’, depending on who is telling the story. Migration, particularly in Europe but equally in the global south and north, exemplifies this, with 120 million displaced people losing homes and educational opportunities. In the United Kingdom, the sixth-largest economy in the world, renowned for its prestigious education system, two narratives are increasingly conflated: one of immigrants, refugees, and illegal migration with that of the positive cultural and financial contributions of international students.

    Activism on campuses has always been a driving force for political change and, thus, encouraged as a form of expression for the marginalised and the stories they have to tell. However, rising global campus protests, like those concerning Ukraine and Gaza, raise concerns about extreme activism, which can harm social cohesion, but also the same international students who contribute significantly to the UK.

    Higher education and university campuses have traditionally been the spaces provided for healthy intercultural dialogue and expression of ‘otherness’ while protecting the marginalised. It is arguably a key responsibility of higher education to promote debate on contested narratives, fostering justice, equity, and humanity to maintain an uneasy but essential peace.

    In this context and through the lens of IAFOR’s international, intercultural, and interdisciplinary mission, this panel presentation will discuss conflicting narratives within migration and the role global citizenship and peace education play in navigating through these issues.

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    Helping Us to Help Ourselves – How Assistive Robots and AI Can Change the Dynamics of Supporting Healthy Ageing and Social Care
    Keynote Presentation: Praminda Caleb-Solly

    Assistive robots and AI offer the potential to transform people's ability to manage their own health, particularly those with the greatest need and lack of adequate support.

    This presentation introduces Professor Caleb-Solly’s ongoing exploration of how connecting robots with different types of sensors can provide real-time information to not only support self-management, but also facilitate timely preventative interventions. These technologies are disruptive and will lead to new models of care. To ensure that assistive robots are functionally competent, safe, and robust enough to be deployed at scale, a co-design approach was adopted in this research, including the use of a participatory approach to explore the ethical, legal, social, and organisational aspects and ensure that the use of assistive robots is indeed effective and empathetic. Recent advances in the field of assistive robotics and AI will be discussed alongside the challenges and approaches for designing assistive robots that add value to our lives. An overview of research findings from the EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Network+ project Emergence will also be introduced, an effort to create a sustainable healthcare robotics eco-system which connects researchers, industry, and healthcare providers, in order to build the infrastructure and systems to drive healthcare robotics research and development to support people living with frailty.

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    The Examination of Eye Movements in Language Learning Research: A Focus on Vocabulary
    Keynote Presentation: Ana Pellicer-Sánchez

    Vocabulary is one of the key components of language proficiency and is crucial for successful communication in a second language. Learners need to acquire large vocabulary sizes in order to understand a range of written and spoken texts, as well as to communicate with ease with others in the target language. Thus, a main concern of language researchers and practitioners has been to find effective approaches to support learners in acquiring the huge vocabulary learning targets. Vocabulary gains in research studies have traditionally been measured using offline tests, e.g., post-treatment vocabulary tests. However, in the last decade, we have witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of vocabulary studies using eye-tracking, specifically to explore learners’ online processing of new words and their relationship with lexical gains. Until now, eye-tracking and its techniques have been predominantly used in psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology as a measure of cognitive effort and attention allocation. Second language acquisition research has begun to incorporate the utilisation of eye-tracking as a key tool for language acquisition studies.

    The aim of this presentation is to provide an overview of what eye-tracking has shown so far in its early stages as a tool to study second language vocabulary learning. The presentation will first provide an introduction to the eye-tracking technique, showing its main advantages and affordances for the study of vocabulary learning. It will then illustrate the use of eye-tracking in vocabulary research, through the presentation of examples from recent studies on learning from reading and subtitled viewing. Directions for future research will be identified as well during the talk.

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    How to Destroy a University
    Keynote Presentation: Donald E. Hall

    Universities across the globe are under attack, and threats are coming from many directions. Some of us find ourselves at ground zero in the culture wars: in the United States, for example, college campuses have become battlegrounds over questions of social justice, fact-based understandings of history, and the roots of inequality. American universities have seen intense verbal and even physical clashes arising from differences in opinion over the causes of and solutions to ongoing conflict in the Middle East, as well as proxy battles over the role of diversity offices and initiatives attempting to address systemic racism.

    However, some existential threats come not from external cultural forces, but instead from disastrous internal leadership decisions and governmental policies.

    In this call to action, I want to examine the tragic situation that one of my former employers—West Virginia University—finds itself in. A noxious combination of financial mismanagement, ignorance of enrollment trends, and wholesale state divestment from higher education has led to a gutting of key liberal arts programs, the termination of many tenured faculty, and deep cost-cutting that signals an impending death spiral of diminishing worth. We who are on the frontlines must find ways to challenge those who, through willful actions or ignorance, threaten the very existence of universities as we know them. This is not a call to martyrdom, but it is a call to action.

    In this address, which will reference (among others) works by Michel de Certeau and Michel Foucault, both of whom were embroiled in the radical politics that shook late 1960s French higher education, I will argue for a multivalent tacticality that is at once radical in intent but also self-protective in nature. I ask conference members to take the work of IAFOR—its advocacy for international/intercultural/interdisciplinary understanding—back to their home campuses. The empathy, self-awareness, and commitment to understanding that we learn to exercise at IAFOR conferences represent critical skill sets we must draw on as we grapple with and respond to the growing volatility of our academic lives.

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    Humanities at the Helm: Mobilising Scholars to Confront the Planetary Climate Crisis
    Keynote Presentation: Alfonso J. García-Osuna

    As the challenges of climate change mount, the role of humanists in addressing this existential threat has become increasingly important. While science undoubtedly plays the pivotal role in understanding and mitigating climate change, a review of the literature (Levine, 2023; Schaus, 2020) shows that humanists have generally been complacent spectators. There is scant analysis regarding the ways in which humanism can engage productively in the conversation on climate change and what it can bring to the table. This paper aims to change that. The research design employed involves a comprehensive examination of the possible intersections between humanism and climate action through a multidisciplinary lens. Drawing upon the work of noted scholars like Caroline Levine, Amitav Ghosh, and Marc Schaus, the paper synthesises diverse perspectives to elucidate the potential roles and responsibilities of humanists in combating global warming. Additionally, qualitative analysis of historical and contemporary examples of humanist texts is utilised to illustrate several practical applications of humanistic principles in addressing the climate crisis. This results in the itemisation of socio-cultural insights with which humanism can serve as a catalyst for transformative change in the fight against climate change. This paper concludes that exclusive to humanists are specific weapons with which to tackle the climate crisis, as well as an arsenal of unique perspectives that can be used to advocate for systemic change, promote sustainable lifestyles, and cultivate that ethical sense of environmental stewardship that science alone cannot bring to bear on the crisis.

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    Invisiblised and Erased Narratives – Essential Views from the Margins
    Keynote Presentation: Neelam Raina

    Today's middle ground seems to be less ‘on point’ and an unfashionable place to be. The echo chamber effect of polarised thinking, in this bumper year of elections, gives us time to pause and reflect on where we have arrived after a worldwide pandemic. Since the global outbreak of COVID-19, our world is getting far more violent: conflict event rates have increased by over 40% from 2020 through 2023; with a stark increase of 12% in 2023 from 2022 rates (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), 2024). As a result, we now have scattered, fragmented spaces where an open constructive global dialogue could be undertaken: the middle ground is receding. These spaces are in short supply for young people across the world, who have constrained access to alternative narratives, histories, and writing. We risk the erasure of such spaces for our youth as each generation that passes takes with it memory, wisdom, and documentation of the middle ground. This talk discusses how this middle ground is key to addressing global challenges and explores how we could hold on to this shrinking space.

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    Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Democracy
    Keynote Presentation: Cian O’Donovan

    ‘It is time to hit pause on AI.’ In March 2023, hundreds of artificial intelligence experts endorsed that message in an open letter to leaders of the world's most powerful technology firms. Future risks are too great, they wrote, and the current pace of AI innovation is too rapid. Yet this letter gets at least one important detail wrong; if innovation is to increase public benefit and not just shareholder value, it's critical that society gets a say in the direction of innovation, not just its speed.

    This talk will highlight multiple emerging directions of AI in health and care sectors and beyond. Appraising these directions is vital for democratic decision making about who should benefit from innovation such as AI, and who should pay. Moreover, focussing policy and public debate on how AI is being directed shows us that AI is not inevitable; its directions are influenced by a range of people, organisations, and interests across society.

    The talk will combine perspectives on policy with research on public values in artificial intelligence and insights from care professionals as they try to get to grips with robotic, automation, and AI systems. It will show that regulation must be matched by capability building and collective action if AI is to empower those who work and depend on care services and not exclude them.

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    AI and Education
    Keynote Presentation: David Mallows

    As higher education professionals, should we be worried about the lack of transparency, and the complex ethical issues that surround the development of AI and its application in higher learning institutions? This talk will discuss AI and education, specifically higher education, with special consideration in regards to the impact that AI might have, or is already having, on teaching and scholarship in our universities. The concept of AI literacy, currently being tentatively defined in scholarship, can largely be defined as a development of critical literacy, and should be highlighted for students as part of modern study within university curricula. This talk will argue that in order to counter the negative aspects of AI, educators and learners alike should be involved in the development of AI for education, not just subject to it. We should seek to influence the technology rather than just work reactively to adapt it (or more likely to adapt to it).

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    An Introduction to the IAFOR Undergraduate Research Symposium (IURS)
    Special Seminar Session: Grant Black, James W. McNally

    First held in Kobe, Japan, in 2015 as the Asian Undergraduate Research Symposium (AURS), the IAFOR Undergraduate Research Symposium (IURS) gives undergraduate students the opportunity to present their original research as a poster presentation for an academic audience. IURS is a two-day symposium held in conjunction with select IAFOR conferences worldwide. Through participation in IURS, students join other engaged undergraduate students from across the globe in an international and interdisciplinary course that aims to enhance their oral communication skills through a series of challenging and exciting online seminars and activities, culminating in an in-person presentation at the conference. Participants learn from peer review, feedback, and advice and in turn, develop their presentation skills, broaden their professional network, and forge new friendships with other up-and-coming academics. Join this special information session to find out about IURS and how your students can get involved in future events.

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