Presenters
Beatrice Bennett, Ph.D.
Béatrice Mousli-Bennett has a doctorate in twentieth century French literature from the University of Paris-IV Sorbonne. Among her publications, a trilogy of biographies, Valery Larbaud (Grand prix de la biographie de l’Académie française, 1998), Max Jacob (Prix Anna-de-Noailles de l'Académie française, 2006), Philippe Soupault (2010), all published by Flammarion, in Paris. She was named Knight of the Order of the Academic Palms (chevalier des Palmes académiques) by the French Minister of Education in 2007.
Jean Charconnet
Jean Charconnet is the current French Language Attaché at the French Consulate in San Francisco. Before coming to California, he was an associate professor at Paris VIII University, teaching in the Master of Language Teaching. He is a member of the research laboratory CNRS UMR 7023, Formal Structures of Language, where he presented on the plasticity of reasoning, which summarized his work on analogy (Charconnet, 2003, Analogie et logique naturelle, Peter Lang, Berne), in relation with the other canonical forms of reasoning. He also presented at the Sorbonne this year on linguistic education policy and the reform of education in Vanuatu.
Olivier Ngo
Olivier Ngo is the Higher Education and French Language Attaché at the French Consulate in Los Angeles (@FranceinLA) where he works to promote French language and to develop academic partnerships between the United States and France.
The mission of the French Embassy’s Cultural Services (@SpeakFrenchinLA) is to strengthen the presence of the French language in American primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools and to support research projects in Humanities and Social Sciences departments.
Valerie Sun, Ed.D.
Valerie Sun (@MlleValsunshine) is a progressive, techy educator of twelve years in private and public schools across elementary and post-secondary education. Currently, she is a consultant, a PD provider, a part-time lecturer at CSU Fullerton and CSULA, and a curriculum developer. She has developed and taught a robotics curriculum and a tech-infused French dual-language immersion curriculum in California.