5.4 The Authors

Michaela Čaňková

is a teacher, teacher trainer and author in the Czech Republic. She works as a language teacher in various posts and is involved in the retraining of teachers of English. She organises and teaches at summer schools and presents papers at conferences, both locally and internationally. She is also a teacher trainer of culture and literature for secondary schools. She has recently designed and presented a series of seminars for the British Council on this topic. She is also an author of textbooks, For example: Open channels (on 20th century British culture and literature) and Open gates (on 20th century American culture and literature), both published in the Czech Republic, and Intercultural activities written with Simon Gill and published by OUP.

Siyka Chavdarova Kostova Ph.D.

is associate professor and chair of the "Theory of education" section at the Faculty of Pedagogy, Sofia University, Bulgaria. She is a lecturer in intercultural education, managerial aspects of culture and education and access to education, intellectual differences and education, pedagogy, pedagogical aspects of the refugees phenomenon, and altruism and education. She is the author of two monographs and more than 60 scientific studies and papers in the fields of intercultural, religious and preventive education.

Ksenia Golubina Ph.D.

in Linguistics, works as associate professor in the Department of Humanities and Applied Sciences, Moscow State Linguistic University, Russian Federation. She teaches intercultural communication, discourse analysis and translation classes to foreign languages majors, designs courses, develops examination materials, writes textbooks and researches into the above-mentioned fields.

Martina Huber-Kriegler

is a lecturer and teacher trainer in Graz, Austria. She is the co-author of the first Austrian intercultural and communicative coursebooks for German as a second language approved for schools; she has developed and co-ordinated the teacher training course on intercultural pedagogy at the Federal Pedagogical Academy, Graz; she has been a teacher trainer for German as a foreign language in Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and China; and a teacher trainer on intercultural learning for many teacher training institutions in Austria. She was a co-ordinator of the ECML workshop "Alternative paths in language learning" in 1995, and participated in the ECML project Incorporating intercultural communication in teacher education, between 2001 and 2003. She is the co-author of Mirrors and windows, and a co-ordinator of the ECML project Intercultural communication in teacher education (2004-07).

Daniel Ivanus

is a junior lecturer in the Department for British and American Studies at the University of Craiova, Romania. His main academic interests include language policies, teacher education, content-based instruction and language (discourse) as an element in contemporary social changes which are widely referred to as "globalisation".

Aina Kačkere

is a lecturer and a mentor trainer at the Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Latvia. Her main fields of interest are foreign language teaching/learning methodology, intercultural communication, ESP and mentoring. She organises and supervises students' teaching practice.

Ildikó Lázár Ph.D.

is a teacher educator in Budapest, Hungary. She teaches English, EFL methodology and intercultural communication courses at Eötvös Loránd University. She has held intercultural communication workshops and made presentations in several countries in Europe. She co-ordinated the international research and training project Incorporating intercultural communication in teacher education (1999-2003) for the ECML. She is the co-author of Mirrors and windows and several other books and articles published in English, French and Hungarian. She was also a co-ordinator of the ECML project Intercultural communication in teacher education (2004-07).

Denise Lussier Ph.D.

is a specialist in measurement and evaluation, and a psycholinguist. She is a professor/researcher at the Faculty of Education, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She is also co-ordinator of Research on Education and Teachers' Training at the Canadian Inter-University Research Centre on Immigration and Metropolis. She was a co-ordinator of the ECML project Cultural mediation and language teaching (2001-03). She is currently directing a research project on cultural representations, ethnic identity and intercultural communication linked to a framework of reference for the development of intercultural communicative competence. She was also a co-ordinator of the ECML project Intercultural communication in teacher education (2004-07).

Gabriela S. Matei Ph.D.

is a trainer trainer, teacher educator and consultant, and manages her own training company, EduPlus Consulting, in Timisoara, Romania. She is also an EAQUALS inspector. Her research and professional interests lie in teacher education, teacher research and intercultural communicative competence. Previously, she worked for many years in tertiary education, focusing on in-service and pre-service teacher training for English language teachers. She has been involved as a project team member in several other teacher education projects of the ECML. She was also a co-ordinator of the ECML project Intercultural communication in teacher education (2004-07).

Christiane Peck

is a teacher educator, teacher and author in Tübingen, Germany. She works for the Staatliches Seminar für Didaktik und Lehrerbildung (Gymnasien) in Tübingen as a pre-service and in-service teacher trainer of Spanish as a foreign language. At the Eberhard-Karls-Universität in Tübingen she teaches methodology and didactics of Spanish and at the Johannes-Kepler-Gymnasium in Reutlingen she works as a teacher of Spanish, French and physical education. She is the co-author of the Spanish textbooks Línea verde and Línea amarilla published by Klett. She was also a co-ordinator of the ECML project Intercultural communication in teacher education (2004-07).

Guadalupe de la Maya Retamar

has been a teacher educator and trainer trainer in French as a foreign language at the Education Faculty of the University of Extremadura in Spain since 1990. Her fields of interest are foreign language teaching methodology with a special focus on the pedagogy of language teaching materials.

Veronika Rot-Gabrovec Ph.D.

lives in Šiška, Ljubljana (Slovenia), and teaches English, cultural studies and children's literature at the English Department, Faculty of Arts (University of Ljubljana). She has been actively involved in teacher training programmes, and has held many workshops on teaching literature to young learners, secondary school students and adult learners. Her main areas of interest are teaching English as a foreign/second language, reading and various types of literacies, literature and teaching of literature, and cultural studies. She is also interested in testing and test development and is currently the head of the Subject Commission for English at the National Examination Centre.

Liljana Skopinskaja Ph.D.

is associate professor at Tallinn University, Estonia, where she teaches FLT methodology and intercultural communicative competence. She has been involved in EFL teaching, syllabus design, materials writing, pre- and in-service teacher training, and test development for twenty years. Her main publications include A handbook of English language teaching (1996), coursebooks on English for secondary school and adult learners, and a number of articles on intercultural communication, coursebook evaluation, teacher training course development and classroom discourse. Her primary research interests are intercultural communication training, language teacher education and assessment. She is a member of the Estonian Association of Applied Linguistics.

Gerlind Vief-Schmidt

is a teacher and teacher trainer/inspector at Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart, Abteilung Schule und Bildung. She teaches English and French and has been involved in workshops and presentations on language and culture, and regional identity and culture, as described in the publication The European dimension through inter-regional partnership (Council of Europe). She has also developed materials for the promotion of intercultural competence through literature and exchanges from primary through secondary to in-and pre-service training for teachers at European conferences and seminars. She co-ordinated European projects such as the Comenius project Sprachreflexion im interkulturellen Kontext.

Silvia Wiesinger Mag.

has been a teacher trainer at the Federal Pedagogical Academy in Linz, Austria, since 1987, and an English language teacher for secondary schools since 1981. She studied pedagogy and social psychology at the Open University Hagen in Germany with the main focus in the field of education and minorities. Her current interests are intercultural education for practising teachers and curriculum development.