Helen Spencer-Oateyis Professor of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Centre for Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick, UK. Herprimaryresearchinterests are in intercultural interaction, intercultural discourse, cross-cultural pragmatics, and cross-cultural psychology. She has an educational background in both linguistics and psychology and often works at the interface of these two fields.She has publishedextensively in the intercultural area, including a number of popular books (e.g.Culturally Speaking, Continuum, 2000/2008; Intercultural Interaction, with Peter Franklin, Palgrave, 2009). The latter, for example, has frequentlybeennear the top of Amazon UK’sbestsellerlistforSociolinguistics, Intercultural Studies and/orResearchMethods. Helen is particularly committed to the applied relevance of her research, and has developed extensive resources for practitioners, many of which are freely available via the University of Warwick’s Global PAD website, which has tens of thousands of downloads per month. Her current research projects include “Global Leaders and Employees: Keys to Intercultural Effectiveness” and “Academic and Social Integration on Campus”.
Prof. Zhu Yunxia is an Associate Professor in Strategy at the University of Queensland Business School, and is member of Board of Directors of ABC. She is an award-winning researcher and educator and has an international reputation in cross-cultural management and communication behavior, organizational discourse studies and effective negotiation. Yunxia got her PhD from the Australian National University and has been trained in Harvard negotiation programs. Prof. Zhu has been a recipient of numerous awards. She is the Best Researcher Award and 2006 Best Publication of ABC, the winner of 2015 University of Queensland (UQ) Teaching and Learning Fellowship, 2014 Australian National Teaching Citation Awards, UQ Vice Chancellor's 2013 Internationalization award, and UQ 2013 Outstanding Teaching Citation award. She is prolific researcher having published books, international journal papers and book chapters, has delivered a series of keynote and invited speeches. She serves on numerous editorial boards for reputable journals including Academy of Management Learning and Education, Discourse and Communication and Public Relations Review. She also serves on the editorial board for the prestigious Pragmatics & Beyond New Series- John Benjamins Publishers.
Prof. Gary Oddou is professor emeritus of California State University, San Marcos, directed and taught in the Global Business Management program from 2001-2013. Dr. Oddou has been a department head at San Jose State University and Utah State University and held other administrative positions during his career. He is most known for his work in cross-cultural competencies, global leadership, expatriate adjustment and repatriate knowledge transfer. He has co-authored or co-edited several books and published over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles in these areas. His original co-authored article on global competencies has been cited in well over 1200 journal articles since it was written. He has taught in universities in England, France, Switzerland, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and the U.S. He is a founding partner in The Kozai Group, a firm which specializes in assessing individuals for their competencies to be effective in a diverse environment. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies on assessing their executives' global competencies and coached a number of them to improve in this area. He is an avid skier, surfer and paraglider.
Prof. Wang Lifei is Dean of the School of International Studies at the University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China. He is member of the Advisory Committee of University English Major of the Ministry of Education, director of the University Business English Major Collaborative Group, vice director of the University Translation Major Collaborative Group under the Ministry of Education, vice executive chairman of China International Business English Association, and chairman of the National EFL Writing Society. He has published more than one hundred research articles in the CSSCI indexed journals on business English studies, L2 acquisition, L2 writing, corpus linguistics, and language research methods. He is chief writer of the National Criterion of Teaching Quality for BA Program in Business English of China issued by MOE, the nationally-accredited business English coursebook, and academic book series of business language teacher development. He led a few key national projects on business English linguistics, business English testing, and language service big data studies on globalizing Chinese businesses.
Prof. Ouyang Huhua is Vice director of Foreign Language Teacher Education and Development Association of Chinaand President of Foreign Language Teachers’ Association of Guangzhou. His research interests evolve around anthropological studies of various practices of community, characterized by the western civil society and Chinese danwei (state-owned work unit) system, including ideology, face/power, mobility, interpersonal interaction in public versus private space, leadership style, and small grouping dynamics, and how such research could inform professionals in English language teaching/learning, academic literacy, teacher education, and intercultural communication. Professor Ouyang has published in prestigious journals such as Anthropology & Education Quarterly (USA), and Education and Society (France), and given guest lectures in over fifty universities including Harvard and Cambridge, as well as keynote speeches in many international conferences.
