Keynote speakers
François Cooren is professor at the Université de Montréal, Canada, where he is chair of the Department of Communication. His research focuses on organizational communication, language and social interaction, and communication theory. He is past president of the International Communication Association (ICA, 2010-2011), past president of the International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA, 2012-2021), distinguished scholar of the National Communication Association (NCA), ICA Fellow, and former editor-in-chief of Communication Theory (2005-2008).
Philip Seargeant is a writer, researcher and educational filmmaker specialising in the study of language and communication. His current work focuses on the relationships between language, politics and social media, while earlier work looked at the emergence and status of English as a global language. His latest book, The Art of Political Storytelling (Bloomsbury 2021), examines the way that stories shape our political lives – and how politicians exploit the power of narrative to engage and persuade the electorate. He has written and produced several educational films, including the award-winning History of English in Ten Minutes. He is currently Senior Lecturer of Applied Linguistics at the Open University (UK). He writes frequently for publications around the world, with bylines including The Huffington Post, The New European and Prospect; and also appears regularly as an expert commentator on national and international media.
Villy Tsakona is Associate Professor of Social and Educational Approaches to Language at the Department of Early Childhood Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She has published articles on various topics on humor research, narrative, political, and media discourse analysis as well as on critical literacy theory and applications. She has co-authored The Narrative Construction of Identities in Critical Education with Argiris Archakis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and authored Recontextualizing Humor: Rethinking the Analysis and Teaching of Humor (De Gruyter Mouton, 2020); she has also co-edited Studies in Political Humor with Diana Popa (John Benjamins, 2011) and The Dynamics of Interactional Humor with Jan Chovanec (John Benjamins, 2018). She is co-editor of the European Journal of Humor Research. Personal webpage: http://www.concept-pl.us/villy.tsakona
