Our Keynote Speakers
Maria Kambanaros
Technological University of Cyprus
Title of talk: Cognitive-Communication Disorders in the context of Heritage Language (HL)
Maria Kambanaros is Professor of Speech Pathology and a bilingual English–Greek Speech Pathologist with over 30 years clinical experience. She has extensively studied heritage language speakers in Australia, Cyprus, and Greece. Her research is primarily focused on language breakdown in child and adult heritage language speakers.
Sviatlana Karpava
University of Cyprus
Title of talk: Heritage Language Use, Maintenance and Transmission: Evidence from Cyprus
Lecturer in Applied Linguistics/TESOL and Linguistics Section Coordinator at the Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus, Co-coordinator of the Testing, Teaching and Translation Lab, Co-Director of the Discourse, Context and Society (DISCONSO). She received her PhD from the University of Cyprus (2014). Dr Karpava is the author of the book: Vulnerable Domains for Cross-Linguistic Influence in L2 Acquisition of Greek (Peter Lang, 2015) and the editor of the Handbook of Research on Multilingual and Multicultural Perspectives on Higher Education and Implications for Teaching and Handbook of Research on Multilingual and Multicultural Perspectives on Higher Education and Implications for Teaching (IGI Global, 2022) as well as Current Trends in Applied Linguistics Research and Implementation (Disigma Publications, 2022). She has presented her research at numerous international conferences and published her research work in various peer-reviewed journals. Her area of research is applied linguistics, second/third language acquisition, bilingualism, multilingualism, sociolinguistics, teaching and education. https://www.ucy.ac.cy/dir/en/cb-profile/skarpa01
Unn Røyneland
University of Oslo
Title of talk: “Because I mix many languages constantly”: Linguistic variation and norm negotiation in social media
Unn Røyneland is a Professor of Scandinavian Linguistics and Multilingualism at the University of Oslo (UiO), and Director of MultiLing, the Center for Multilingualism in Society Across the Lifespan, CoE, UiO. Her current research concerns multilingual and multilectal practices in social media, dialect acquisition and use among migrants, language and embodiment, emergent speech styles among adolescents in multilingual, urban environments, language advocacy and language policy and planning. Her recent publications include two co-edited volumes in the Routledge Critical Studies in Multilingualism Series: Multilingualism across the Lifespan (2021) and Spaces of Multilingualism (2021), with Robert Blackwood, a special issue of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development: Migration and Dialect Acquisition in Europe (2020), with Peter Auer, and a co-edited volume at Cambridge University Press: Multilingual youth practices in Computer Mediated Communication (2018) with Cecelia Cutler (eds.). She is one of the chief editors of the new online series at De Gruyter LME Linguistic Minorities in Europe Online. She has served on a number of editorial boards, scientific advisory boards of international projects, and on various expert panels of international sciences foundations.
Maria Polinsky
University of Maryland
Title of talk: Impossible to forget: Motivating some recurrent properties of heritage languages
Maria Polinsky is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park and Director of the National Heritage Research Center at UCLA. She is the founder and Director of several research field stations. Polinsky’s research combines theoretical syntactic work with in-depth investigation of understudied languages. She is a pioneer in the field of heritage language studies, having explored the ways in which heritage speakers are different from other speakers and learners and the consequences of these differences for our understanding of language learning. She has served on the editorial boards of multiple journals, on the National Science Foundation’s Expert Panel on Linguistics, and on advisory boards of several international centers. She is the author of over a hundred scholarly articles and several books including Deconstructing Ergativity (2016) and Heritage Languages and Their Speakers (2018).
Elena Theodorou
Technological University of Cyprus
Title of talk: Developmental language disorder within a bi-dialectal context
Elena Theodorou is an Assistant Professor of Speech Therapy/ Speech Pathology in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT). She holds a Bachelor's degree in Speech Therapy from the Technological Institute of Patras in Greece and a Master's in Science in Language and Communication Impairment in Children from Sheffield University in U.K.. Her research areas are the diagnosis of language impairment, language acquisition in typical and atypical populations, and Augmentative and Alternative Communication. She has worked as a research assistant in several regional and European projects since 2001. She participated in COST IS1406 project that focuses on enhancing children's oral language skills across Europe and beyond as a substitute management committee member. She also conducted (2017-2019) research funding from the CUT to promote accurate diagnosis and proper intervention of children with language impairment. Currently, she is a scientific coordinator of a project aiming to describe the linguistic process of individuals with Developmental Language Disorder.
She has been an active member of the Child Language Committee (CLC) of the International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP) since 2020. She is a registered member of the Association of Speech Pathologists of Cyprus and has served as the Registration Council of Speech and Language Pathologists president since 2021.
Regarding her clinical experience, she worked for 15 years as a Speech and Language Therapist in government settings (hospital, pre-primary and primary schools), where she provided speech and language services to children with speech, language, and communication disorders. She also served as a Special Education Needs Coordinator (SENCo) in Cyprus's public mainstream and special schools.
