Speakers

Joseph (Joe) Lo Bianco, AM, FAHA, is Professor Emeritus in language and literacy, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne.  He held the position of Chair Professor of Language Literacy Education from his appointment as Professor at the University of Melbourne in February 2004.  In 1987, he authored Australia’s first national language policy, recognised as Australia’s first, and also the first comprehensive multilingual policy in the world, and between 1990 and 2002 was Director of Language Australia/The National Languages and Literacy Institute of Australia.  He was elected President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2012, the first educator to serve in this role.  Professor Lo Bianco retired from the position at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education in June 2020 and was appointed Professor Emeritus of the University.

His academic specialisation is in language policy analysis, accompanied by an extensive track record in language policy advising. These assignments have concerned minority language rights, literacy and social opportunity, language policy and planning with a specific interest in conflict mitigation in multi-ethnic societies in Southeast Asia, educational equity for immigrant and Indigenous populations, multilingual and anti-racist education and language revitalisation.  

His academic analysis and theorization of language problems in education and society is complemented by real-world policy writing, advising and engagement in 25 international locations.  In recent years this has included a 12-year project in Southeast Asia for UNICEF under the title of Language, Education and Social Cohesion, focusing on conflict resolution in multi-ethnic settings in Malaysia, Myanmar and South Thailand and as consultant to a six-year project on Multilingual Cities in 12 European municipalities responding to recent inflows of immigrants.   Through this work he has pioneered a form of language problem solving called the Facilitated Dialogue which transforms public policy processes into realistic solutions and advances the notion of language rights.  

Recent publications include

Lo Bianco, Loh, Shum, (2024), Supporting Chinese as a Second Language Learners, Springer

Lo Bianco, Lundberg, Spolsky, (2025), Language Policy & Planning: Review of Research, Bloomsbury

Helal & Lo Bianco, (2025), Language Politics in Tunisia: A Study of Language Debates, Multilingual Matters

Lo Bianco (2025) What Kind of Linguistics is Language Policy and Language Planning?  Contemporary Linguistics, Bradley et al, Brill.

Wijesekera and Lo Bianco (2026) Sri Lankan Lessons: Bilingual Education, Identity Formation and Peacebuilding. Springer.

A/Prof Louisa Willoughby is an applied linguist deeply interested in issues of social inclusion and exclusion for minority language speakers. She works with mainstream institutions such as schools, hospitals and libraries in Australia to explore better ways of engaging with clients from non-English speaking backgrounds and developing multilingual language proficiency. For the past 15 years she has conducted research around Auslan and Deafblind signing. She is currently an ARC Industry Fellow with Melbourne Polytechnic and the VDEI, looking at how best to support Auslan teachers who work in adult education contexts.

Yvette Slaughter is Associate Professor in Languages and Literacies Education at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on advancing theoretical and pedagogical innovations for languages education (second or additional languages) and the integration of heteroglossic perspectives into education. Her work seeks to problematise and challenge monolingual-centric assumptions that underpin curriculum, pedagogy and assessment in education (early childhood to tertiary) and work towards pedagogical and curriculum innovations that position students’ linguistic and cultural resources as an asset for learning.

Erika has two decades of experience teaching translation and interpreting at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Her research focuses on the professionalisation of community interpreting & translation, and the impact language barriers have on non-English speakers. Erika ́s research and work focuses on the promotion of professional interpreting & translation services to ensure fair access to the system for those who cannot communicate in the language/s of their host societies.

Erika's academic expertise and knowledge gained as an active interpreter & translator have allowed her to develop strategies to professionalise translation & interpreting services in Australia. Her involvement in academia, the Professional Accreditation Authority (NAATI) and Professional Association (AUSIT) have been paramount in achieving this goal.

Erika is the Program Manager of RMIT's Translating and Interpreting Postgraduate Degrees and a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA).

Dr Dima Rusho is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University, Australia. Her research investigates systemic barriers and inequities experienced by marginalised communities in accessing institutional services, with a focus on the justice and healthcare systems. In the justice system, her work examines how language and communication barriers shape access to justice for Indigenous Australians in remote regions. In the field of health, she explores the political and socioeconomic determinants that affect access to care for people living with chronic conditions, including dementia, in Southeast Asia.

Ward Peeters is Lecturer in Linguistics at Monash University and Visiting Professor at Kanda University of International Studies (Japan). His main research interests include studying digital discourse in language learning contexts, language acquisition and development, and learning analytics.

Ward has coordinated research projects in Australia, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands and South Africa as part of an extensive study on computer-supported collaborative language learning. He is the Director of the Master of Applied Linguistics at Monash University and editor of the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (John Benjamins Publishing) and TESOL in Context (ACTA).

Helen Zhao is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. She completed her PhD in Second Language Acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on second language grammar learning and teaching, drawing on construction grammar and emphasizing the central role of semantics in grammar analysis, acquisition, and instruction. She employs behavioral experiments, EEG, and learner corpus analysis to examine how learners acquire grammar, with particular interest in the influence of input distribution and the use of image-schematic diagrams in spatial language processing. Her work has investigated English acquisition among Chinese, Cantonese, and Japanese learners, as well as Australian Indigenous children who speak Creole as their first language. She has published in leading journals including Language Learning, Modern Language Journal, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Brain and Language, and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. She teaches and supervises in second language acquisition, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and research methods.

Dr Jing Qi is Manager of the RMIT Community Languages Teacher Education Program. Jing has worked in universities in Australia and China since 2003, designing and delivering teaching in the disciplinary areas of Education and Languages. Jing researches and publishes on teacher education, language education, international education, and digital education.

Dr. Hyejeong Ahn is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne. With a teaching career that began in South Australia and extended to South Korea and Singapore, Dr. Ahn has experience with diverse student backgrounds. Her research focuses on the evolving language learning and literacy skills needed in global contexts. Her work, known for its sound and innovative methodology, has significantly informed language education and research through the perspectives of English as a global language.

Lucien Brown is the Korea Foundation Associate Professor in Korean Studies in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He conducts research in pragmatics and sociolinguistics, with a particular focus on Korean honorifics, kinship terms, (im)politeness, and gesture. His latest co-authored book Politeness Metapragmatics: Inductive Research, Multimodality and Critical Theory has just been published by Springer. He is Editor of Korean Linguistics and Associate Editor for Journal of Pragmatics.

Noriko Iwashita is an Associate Professor at the School of Languages and Cultures, The University of Queensland, Australia. At UQ, she teaches classroom SLA, language pedagogy courses, language assessment and testing in the Master’s program and supervises PhD and MA students in the area of classroom SLA and assessment. Noriko’s research interests include peer interaction in classroom-based research and classroom assessment, the interfaces of language assessment and SLA, and task-based teaching and assessment. Her work has been published in co-authored books, edited books, and flagship journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Learning, Applied Linguistics, Language Teaching Research, and Language Testing.