Plenary speakers

Prof. PhD Leonidas Donskis

Leonidas Donskis,
European Parliament

“The Paradox of Lemuel Gulliver, or Searching for the Cultural Code of Europe”

His main scholarly interests lie in philosophy of history, philosophy of culture, philosophy of literature, philosophy of the social sciences, civilization theory, political theory, history of ideas, and studies in Central and East European thought.

A wandering scholar, he has done research and lectured in the USA, Great Britain, and Europe. Leonidas Donskis has been an IREX-International Research and Exchanges Board Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar, and a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, USA; a Swedish Institute Guest Researcher at the University of Gothenburg and a Guest Professor of East European Studies at the University of Uppsala, Sweden; a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Bradford, Great Britain; Paschal P. Vacca Chair (Distinguished Visiting Professor) of Liberal Arts at the University of Montevallo in Alabama, USA; and a Fellow at the Collegium Budapest/Institute for Advanced Study, Hungary.

Until 7 June 2009, Leonidas Donskis acted as Professor of Political Science at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania. From 2005 to 2009, he served as Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy at Vytautas Magnus University. In addition, he still acts as Docent of Social and Moral Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, and as Extraordinary Visiting Professor of Cultural Theory at Tallinn University, Estonia.

Leonidas Donskis has been published widely in international refereed journals, and is the author or editor of more than twenty books, ten of them in English. His books originally written in Lithuanian and English have been translated into Danish, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, and Ukrainian. He edits two book series for Editions Rodopi, B. V. (Amsterdam and New York), one in Baltic studies, and another – VIBS-Value Inquiry Book Series. From 2005 to 2009, served as a Member of the Standing Committee for the Humanities (SCH) in the European Science Foundation (ESF).

On 19 July 2011 Leonidas Donskis was granted the Honorary Doctor (Doctor of Letters) of Humanities for academic research work in Eastern Europe and in the field of education of Baltic countries, also for his publications, activity in the public sphere and work in the European Parliament.

Prof. PhD Dmitrij Dobrovolskij

Dmitrij Dobrovolskij,
Stockholm University

“Phraseology: Theoretical Aspects and Lexicographic Applications”

Dmitrij Dobrovol’skij received his PhD from the University of Leipzig in 1975, and his Dr. habil. from Moscow State Linguistic University in 1990. Since 1991, he has been Senior Researcher (and since 1995, Professor) at the Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and since 1996, he has been an invited professor at the Moscow State University (Faculty of Foreign Languages). Dobrovol’skij’s recent research has dealt with a variety of topics, including the theory of figurative language, German and Russian lexical semantics and phraseology. Since 2001 he has been participating at the corpus research programme AAC-Austrian Academy Corpus at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, and since 2010, he has been an invited professor at the Stockholm University (Institute of Slavic Languages).

Prof. PhD Michael Kelly

Michael Kelly,
University of Southampton

“Issues of Language Policy in Higher Education”

Mike is Director of LLAS, the Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, and plays a leading role in developing public policy on languages and cultural diversity in the UK. He was a member of the Nuffield Language Inquiry and directs the government funded Routes into Languages programme, to widen access to languages in school and university. He is Hon. Secretary of the European Language Council and Editor of the European Journal of Language Policy/ Revue européenne de politique linguistique.

Assoc prof. dr. Waldemar Martyniuk

Waldemar Martyniuk,
European Centre for Modern Languages

“Learning through languages: promoting plurilingual and intercultural approach to education”

Dr Waldemar Martyniuk is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Centre for Polish Language and Culture of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. Teacher trainer, author of textbooks, curricula and testing materials for Polish as a foreign language, he also holds the position of Visiting Professor and Lecturer at several universities in Germany (Bochum, Giessen, Göttingen, Mainz, Münster), Switzerland (Basel) and in the USA (Stanford). He translated the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) into Polish (2003) and seconded to the Council of Europe, Language Policy Division (Strasbourg, France, 2005–2006). Since October 2008 he has been the Executive Director at the European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe, based in Graz, Austria.

Jolanta Urbanikowa

Jolanta Urbanikowa,
University of Warsaw

Bologna expert, member of the Programme Board of the Language Centre, member of the Board of the Centre for Open and Multimedia Education; engaged in realization of numerous European projects related to language policy and education and quality assurance in higher education within Socrates and LLP programmes; University coordinator for UNICA (Universities in Capital Cities of Europe); member of national European Language Label selection committee.

Author of papers on language policy in higher education, quality assurance and Bologna Process and qualifications frameworks.

Academic and professional interests: language policy; quality assurance in university (language) education; Bologna Process.