Panel speakers

Bessie Dendrinos is Professor Emerita and Director of the Research Institute for Multilingualism and Language Policy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She is Chair of the Central Examination Board for the national foreign language exams in Greece, and president of the European Civil Society Platform for Multilingualism – home to the Cluster of University Research Units on Multilingualism. She has researched and published on European language education policy, multi-/plurilingualism and linguistic mediation, English and foreign language politics, and glocal language testing. Her publications appear mainly in English, Greek, but also in Spanish, Portuguese and French.

Daniela Fasoglio is a senior curriculum developer and modern language expert at the Dutch Institute for Curriculum Development (SLO). She oversees foreign language curriculum reforms in Dutch upper secondary education. Her expertise includes curriculum analysis, design and evaluation, as well as development and implementation processes. She was a member of the CEFR expert group at the Council of Europe. In the Netherlands, she has recently coordinated the design of a CEFR portal for Dutch modern language education and the development of interactive digital tools for the implementation of the CEFR in the school curriculum.

Angelica Galante is Associate Professor in Second Language Education and William Dawson Scholar at McGill University. As the Director of the Plurilingual Lab, Dr. Galante conducts studies with her research team in the areas of plurilingual education, language pedagogy, linguistic discrimination and justice, and teacher education. Dr. Galante has received several awards for research excellence, including the 2024 McGill University’s President Prize and the 2019 Pat Clifford Award by EdCan Network. 

Rosanna Margonis-Pasinetti was until 2024 Associate Professor and the former Head of the Foreign Languages Teacher Training Department at the Lausanne University of Teacher Education, after working for many years as a language teacher and a foreign language teacher trainer. Her scientific interests concern task-based language learning and teaching, plurilingualism, interculturalism and language policies.

Brian North is a researcher and consultant to the Council of Europe. After developing the CEFR levels and descriptors in his PhD in a Swiss National Science Foundation project, he co-authored the CEFR, the prototype European Language Portfolio, the CEFR Manual for relating assessments, Eaquals’ CEFR core inventories (English and French) and the CEFR Companion Volume. Other CEFR-related projects include investigation of CEFR use in Canada and Switzerland, alignment of the Canadian Language Benchmarks to the CEFR and the ECML’s CEFR QualiMatrix. (Co-)publications include The CEFR in Practice (CUP 2014), Language Course Planning (OUP 2018) and The Action-oriented Approach (Multilingual Matters 2019) 

Libor Stepanek is Assistant Professor in English and Director of the Masaryk University Language Centre, Brno, Czech Republic. He is also a teacher, researcher and teacher trainer in the areas of EAP, EMI and Creative Approach to Language Teaching (CALT), and an author of teaching materials, online courses and publications. Libor encourages holistic and CV-CEFR based approaches in language teaching and learning, close cooperation between teaching and research, holistic continuous professional development and teacher autonomy based on personal professional responsibility.

Maria Teresa Zanola currently works at the Department of Foreign Literature and Linguistics, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. Zanola does research in Terminology, Contrastive Linguistics and History of French Language. Their most recent publication is 'Arts et métiers au XVIIIe siècle'. She is the President of the European Language Council. She is Accademica corrispondente interna, Accademia della Crusca.