Plenary Speakers
Adrian Walwork
Bio:
Adrian Walwork is the author of over 50 textbooks for Springer Nature, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, BBC, Scholastic, BEP. His books for Springer Nature on English for science communication are used by universities around the world and have to date been translated into Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Farsi.
Since 2000, Adrian has held more than 100 courses for doctoral students and researchers at universities primarily in Italy, but also recently in China and Qatar. In January 2023 he integrated his course with an analysis of how chatbots (not just ChatGPT) and other AI tools can radically improve the students' writing and communication skills. In mid 2025 he began teaching native-speaking PhD students and researchers in the UK. In 2025, he also taught online over 150 researchers of all ages (25-70+) in Moscow and Ankara.
2026 will see the publication of a position paper on AI and Writing for Oxford University Press, and a book entitled Chatbots In The Classroom: A Guide to AI Literacy for Cambridge University Press.
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Deniz Şallı-Çopur
Bio:
Dr. Deniz Şallı-Çopur is a teacher educator in the Department of Foreign Language Education at Middle East Technical University. Here, she has been teaching methodology and practicum courses to prospective teachers of English. Her areas of interest are pre-service teacher education, materials design, program evaluation, and assessment. She also takes part in program evaluation and curriculum studies as an external researcher.
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Karen E. Johnson
Bio:
Karen E. Johnson is Kirby Professor Emerita of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics at Penn State. Her research focuses on L2 teacher cognition and teacher education, grounded in Vygotskian sociocultural theory. She examines how L2 teachers learn, develop, and enact their practices through dialogic mediation, narrative inquiry, and socially situated professional activity. Her work highlights the transformative role of reflective and narrative practices in fostering teacher development.
She has published ten scholarly books, including Transformative L2 Teacher Education Innovations: Insights from Vygotsky Sociocultural Theory (2025, Routledge). In the MA TESL and PhD in Applied Linguistics programs, she taught courses on TESL, L2 writing, classroom communication, teacher education, and sociocultural theory.
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