Keynote Speakers
5th Annual Conference on Second-Language Learning & Disabilities
Keynote Speaker – Miguel Ángel Font Bisier
Biography
Miguel Ángel Font Bisier (January 1987) is a Valencian film director, writer and researcher. With a degree in audiovisual communication, he has twenty years of musical training. He speaks six languages, which has allowed him to write and direct more than 300 audiovisual projects. With ver diverse styles and formats, his productions have been awarded both nationally and internationally.
He is a specialist in cultural inclusion and accessibility and is the founder of www.miCINEinclusivo.com, a platform from which he disseminates his recognized work in this field. Author of fiction and documentary titles such as XMILE, Blues Time or Creating Inclusive Cinema, in 2019 he shot his first inclusive feature film: SWING! La vida d’un secret. He has published five multimedia books including Cine de diseño universal, Viaje al corazón de un cuadro and Un confinamiento de cuentos.
He is currently working on his PhD in Audiovisual and Literary Translation while simultaneously writing feature film scripts and working for various producers, brands and social entities at a national and international level.
___________________________________________________________________________
We are so grateful to all the keynote speakers that have been with us in the past editions!
___________________________________________________________________________
4th Second-Language Learning & Disabilities Conference
Keynote Speaker – Tammy Berberi
Biography
Tammy Berberi is an associate professor of French at the University of Minnesota Morris and co-editor, with Elizabeth Hamilton and Ian Sutherland, of Words Apart? Disability and Foreign Language Learning (Yale UP, 2008). As part of her work for “Dreaming Up the Change Disability Makes,” a grant to cultivate disability studies programming at the University of Minnesota, Berberi edited with Jennifer Row the winter 2021 issue of L’Esprit Créateur, which explores disabled worldmaking in French disability studies. As a teacher, mentor, colleague, and advisor for 20+ years, Berberi advocates for the experiences of disabled students and others who have been underserved in higher education. Current efforts to support access, wellbeing and a deepened sense of belonging for all students include serving as a “subject matter expert” for the University of Minnesota President’s Initiative on Student Mental Health and a current member of the Board of Directors for the Association of Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD). In 2019, Berberi was awarded the University of Minnesota President’s Award for Outstanding Service.
3rd Second-Language Learning & Disabilities Conference
Keynote Speaker – Elizabeth Hamilton
Biography
Professor Hamilton is Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Oberlin College and Associate Professor of German. Her areas of scholarly and teaching interest center on disability as a lived experience and in cultural representations; accessibility in higher education; translation; and on East German literature and film. Her scholarship on these interrelated subjects includes her dissertation, co-editing of a volume on accessible language pedagogy, articles on disability in German cinema and in literature, a foreword to a volume on universal design in language teaching “Disability and World Language Learning” written by Wade Edwards and Sally Scott’s, and the English translation of a major German essay on the legacy of the murder of “life unworthy of living.” Her current project is an original translation and study of the Franz-Fühmann-Dietmar Riemann photo essay volume, Was für eine Insel in was für einem Meer. This project is in preparation for open-access, digitally-native publication.
Professor Hamilton co-authored “Worlds Apart? Disability and Foreign Language Learning”, a book that has been influential to many scholars in the research on disabilities and second language learning.
2nd Second-Language Learning & Disabilities Conference
Keynote Speaker – Wade Edwards
Biography
Wade Edwards, PhD, Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences, Professor of French at Longwood University in Virginia. In 2008, to reverse a growing trend, he partnered with Sally Scott, a colleague in Disability Resources, to improve success rates for students in required world language classes on campus. With support from a 4-year grant from the US Department of Education called Project LINC, they developed portable training materials for world language instructors at the college level. Over the last decade Wade and Sally have been researching, presenting, and writing about the intersection between disability and world language learning, which became the title of the book they published last year. Wade’s other publications have appeared in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Feminist Teacher, the NECTFL Review, and the Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability.
1st Second-Language Learning & Disabilities Conference
Keynote Speaker – Linda Hecker
Biography
Linda Hecker is a life-long educator with 40 years as a special educator, 32 of them at Landmark College where she is a member of the founding faculty. She has directed tutorial and teacher training programs, taught English, music, study skills, and served as an academic advisor and academic dean. She was appointed to the Landmark College Institute for Research and Training in 2001 and currently serves as lead education specialist. She frequently presents at workshops, seminars, and graduate courses for educators and parents. Her areas of interest and research include assistive technology, adolescent literacy, pedagogy for teaching composition, reading, study skills, and adult education. In her free time she doubles as a freelance violinist/violist.