KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
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Dr. Karina Firkavičiūtė is Head of the Lithuanian Karaim Association of Culture and a civil servant of the EU Research Executive Agency. Karina is an associate professor in Humanities, musicologist, a member of the Lithuanian Composers' Union, and a master of Interdisciplinary European Studies. In 1995-1996 studied in Germany on a DAAD scholarship. She taught at the Lithuanian Academy of Music, Vilnius and Pedagogical Universities, was Director of the Lithuanian Institute, Education and Science Attaché at the Permanent Representation of the Republic of Lithuania to the EU in Brussels, and was an employee of the European Commission's Directorate for Research. She speaks 8 languages and is one of only 30 people in the world who still speak her native Karaim language.
Her research interests include the musical cultures of the Eastern world, the world of national minorities, and especially everything related to the Karaim culture, music, history, religion and heritage. She is the author and compiler of several books on the Karaim music and cultural heritage, the author of numerous articles, the initiator, author and implementer of many projects aimed at preserving and promoting Karaim cultural heritage and especially the language, and the translator of the Karaim literary heritage from Karaim into other languages.
She edited, translated and compiled the anthology of Karaim poetry “Čypčychlej Učma Trochka.” Lietuva karajlarnyn jyrlary (1997, J. Savičius Prize), compiled and published the Karaim Calendar 2001-2051 (2001); co-editor of the publications “wentieth Century Music in the View of Musicology" (2001) and “Bir kiuń ėdi” (2015). Author of the book “Życie w pieśni karaimskiej = Life in Karaim songs = Tirlik karaj jyrlarynda” (2016), compiler of the e-publication “Karaim language in use”. Together with Halina Kobeckaite, she translated Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince” into Karaim language (“Kiči Bijčiek”, published by Edition Tintenfass 2018).
For her contribution to the promotion of Karaim culture, she has received the awards from the Department of National Minorities (2016, 2019), the Municipal Association's Krivūle (2022), and the State award - the Order of Merit for Lithuania medal (2022).
Dr. Jūratė Ruzaitė is Professor at the Department of Foreign Languages, Literary and Translation Studies at Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Bergen, Norway. She has rich experience in (inter)national research projects, including a national project (Semantika-2, 2018-2019), which developed software for automatic detection of offensive online comments in Lithuanian. She is also an associate editor of the Lithuanian Applied Linguistics Journal, a board member of the Lithuanian Association of Applied Linguistics, and a member of several associations, including the International Language and Law Association. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, language and ideology, hate speech, propaganda and disinformation.
Johan Sandberg McGuinne is a South Saami and Scottish Gaelic poet, traditional yoik singer, writer, literary scholar and language activist. He works as a teacher and translator in Lïkssjuo (Lycksele), Swedish Sápmi, where he is also based. He is currently serving as the president of Tjállegoahte, the Saami Writers' Centre in Sweden, and as the Regional Representative for Sápmi in the Swedish Writers’ Union. In addition, he is a member of the Swedish Library Council, which serves as an expert body and advisor to the board of the Swedish Writers’ Union on library matters.
Dr. John W. Schwieter is professor of psychology, linguistics, and Spanish at Wilfrid Laurier University and adjunct professor of linguistics at McMaster University, both in Canada. He is the director of the Language Acquisition, Multilingualism, and Cognition research lab and Bilingualism Matters @ Laurier. He has held invited appointments at the University of Greenwich and the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Dr. Schwieter’s research interests include cognitive and neuroscientific approaches to multilingualism and language acquisition; translation, interpreting, and cognition; and second language teaching and learning. He has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters. Among the 23 books he has authored or edited are: Understanding multilingualism: An introduction (Wiley); The cognitive neuroscience of bilingualism (CUP); and The Cambridge handbook of working memory and language (CUP).
Dr. Schwieter is currently Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Ampersand: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language Sciencesand Bilingualism, Editor of Cambridge Elements in Second Language Acquisition, and Executive Editor of John Benjamin’s Bilingual Processing and Acquisition book series.
He is currently working on research examining how bilinguals mentally control their languages and whether this ability affects other cognitive domains and skills.
Professor Ghil‘ad Zuckermann (DPhil Oxford; PhD Cambridge, titular) is listed among Australia's top 30 'living legends of research' by The Australian newspaper (2024). He received the Rubinlicht Prize for his outstanding contribution to Yiddish scholarship in 2023. He is the Chair of the Jury for the Jeonju International Awards for Promoting Intangible Cultural Heritage. He is the author of Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2020), the seminal bestseller Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli – A Beautiful Language; Am Oved, 2008), Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 多源造词研究 (A Study of Multisourced Neologization; East China Normal University Press, 2021), three chapters of the Israeli Tingo (Keren, 2011) and Engaging – A Guide to Interacting Respectfully and Reciprocally with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, and their Arts Practices and Intellectual Property (2015). He is a co-author of the first online Dictionary of the Barngarla Aboriginal Language (2018), and the Barngarla trilogy: (1) Barngarlidhi Manoo ('Speaking Barngarla Together'): Barngarla Alphabet & Picture Book, 2019; (2) Mangiri Yarda ('Healthy Country'): Barngarla Wellbeing and Nature, 2021; and (3) Wardlada Mardinidhi ('Bush Healing'): Barngarla Plant Medicines, 2023. He is the editor of Burning Issues in Afro-Asiatic Linguistics (2012), Jewish Language Contact (2014), a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, and the co-editor of Endangered Words, Signs of Revival (2014).
Professor Zuckermann was elected fellow of the Academy of Oriental Scholars (Shanghai) in 2011 and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in 2014. He was President of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies in 2017-2023, President of AustraLex in 2013-2015, Chief Investigator in an NHMRC research project assessing language revival and mental health in 2017-2021, Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow in 2007–2011, and Gulbenkian Research Fellow at Churchill College Cambridge in 2000-2004. He has been an elected board member of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL). He has been Consultant and Expert Witness in (forensic) linguistics, (corpus) lexicography and trademarks in court cases all over the globe. Professor Zuckermann is the founder of Revivalistics, a new global, comparative, trans-disciplinary field of enquiry surrounding language reclamation, revitalization and reinvigoration. On 14 September 2011 he launched, with the Barngarla Aboriginal communities of Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, the reclamation of the Barngarla language. He has been closely involved with many other language revivals in Australia (e.g. Bayoongoo, Western Australia, and Nharangga, South Australia) and all over the globe.
Zuckermann is Professor (Level E) at Flinders University (Adelaide), Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education, Australian Catholic University (Sydney) and Visiting Professor at Middlebury College (Vermont, USA) and Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel). He has taught at the University of Adelaide (2011-2024), University of Queensland (2006-2011), University of Cambridge, National University of Singapore, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, East China Normal University, Shanghai International Studies University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and University of Miami. He has been Research Fellow at Tel Aviv University; Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Conference Center, Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Institute for Advanced Study, La Trobe University (Melbourne); Mahidol University (Bangkok); and Kokuritsu Kokugo Kenkyūjo (National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, Tokyo). He has been Denise Skinner Scholar at St Hugh’s College Oxford, Scatcherd European Scholar at the University of Oxford, and scholar at the United World College of the Adriatic (Italy). His MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), Language Revival: Securing the Future of Endangered Languages, has attracted 20,000 learners from 190 countries (speakers of hundreds of distinct languages):
https://www.edx.org/course/language-revival-securing-future-adelaidex-lang101x
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