Founder of English Scholars Beyond Borders 

I retired from my final position as Professor and Head of English at the American University of Sharjah in 2022, after 46 years in full time teaching and lecturing. Previously I worked at the Petroleum Institute (now Khalifa University) in Abu Dhabi (2006 -2017), Kochi University in Japan (1995-2006), and Qatar University, (1990 – 1995). Earlier I worked in secondary education in Qatar, Ethiopia, Germany, England and France. Now back in my native Yorkshire in the UK, my academic life revolves around running ESBB which I founded with some other close academic associates in 2013.  I think I have been incredibly lucky in my career, as it has allowed me to travel all over the world, especially in Asia, including academic guest visits to India, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Korea, Oman, Turkey, Thailand, Iran and China. 

My personal journey in intercultural communication began in 1973. It continued academically with an MA and a PhD from the University of Reading, UK supervised by Ron White. I have also enjoyed editing a number of Asian journals (including English Scholarship Beyond Borders which I still edit). As an expatriate teacher/researcher/presenter in Asia and the Middle East, I have come to realise that these are the major centres of scholarship ESL and intercultural curriculum development. Although ‘retired’ from full time work, I remain active in ESBB and am currently doing research into intercultural narrative. My own holistic approach to scholarship, education, and life itself, is an approach which engages us as ‘whole’ people in life-long learning and openness to other cultures. A socially responsible form of project-based learning has long been my teaching preference, an approach which students seem to love, as it puts them at the centre of learning and fully engages them (and their teachers) both intellectually and emotionally. One of my related interests is phenomenology (a ‘philosophy of life’), but with an intercultural twist. The aim is to help us better understand ourselves, ‘the self’, in relation to a very culturally diverse array of ‘others’. At ESBB, we promote a strong, transparent, first-person voice. (See http://www.englishscholarsbeyondborders.org/esbb-journal-publications/english-scholarship-bey ond-border-volume-4-issue-2018)

I still enjoy research relationships with international and local colleagues and engaging in friendly and respectful dialogue across borders. ESBB is unusual in that it also publishes creative work written by international-minded poets and authors who may also be scholars. In ‘retirement’, I have resuscitated my own creative life as a singer-song writer, which I practiced in my younger years. Back in the UK, I have also become very interested in supporting inter-community relations. I chair a registered charity called the Sylvie Nunn Trust that supports inter-community and intercultural understanding and mental health through music education.  Hence the ESBB related development of practical intercultural activity encapsuled in the idea that I call ‘intercultural translatability’. (See https://www.englishscholarsbeyondborders.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Roger-Nunn.pdf)

Extraordinary Professor and past Head of Language Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of the Western Cape, Republic of South Africa (RSA)

He is also a National Research Foundation (NRF) rated Researcher in RSA. He is a senior founding member of English Scholars Beyond Borders (ESBB), as a volunteer committed to promoting locally relevant practices and pedagogies aimed at democratizing and dehegemonizing the teaching of English and researching into it across cultures and continents. He has been a foreign language/ second language educator for forty years now and has taught English in India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Bahrain, Armenia, and U.A.E prior to relocating to the Western Cape. He has edited international journals, presented papers, conducted workshops and delivered plenaries at prestigious conference forums abroad. His research interests include response-centred reading/writing pedagogies, literature-based language pedagogies, constructivism in EIL, second language advocacy, narratives in language education and text-based approaches to academic and social literacy practices. He has been and remains very active in supervising PhD and MA students in these areas.

• Email contact: ssivasubramnaim@uwc.ac.za and  sivakumar49@yahoo.com

• ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7794-2571 

• Postal address: University of the Western Cape, Bellville 7535, Western Cape, Republic of South Africa

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pham Hong Long serves as a Chairman of Research and Education and a lecturer of the Faculty of Tourism Studies at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (USSH), Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU). He holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Studies from Vietnam National University, Hanoi, a Master's degree in Tourism Management from Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), Malaysia, and a Ph.D. in Tourism from Rikkyo University, Japan.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pham Hong Long also contributes as a visiting lecturer to several international institutions, including Rikkyo University (Japan), UCSI University (Malaysia), Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM, Malaysia), and Prince of Songkla University, Phuket Campus (Thailand).

His primary research interests encompass tourism destination policy and governance, ecotourism, community-based tourism, and sustainable tourism development within Southeast Asian nations.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pham Hong Long is a leading consultant on tourism development policy, sustainable tourism, community-based tourism, and ecotourism projects across numerous destinations in Vietnam, with a particular emphasis on special-use and protection forests. He has provided consultancy services to various international organizations, such as the British Council Vietnam, KOICA, GIZ, UNDP, UNESCO, USAID, ILO, IUCN, WWF, and JICA. Notably, he provides widespread consultancy to governments, businesses, and destinations on public-private partnerships in tourism development. He was a key-note speaker for the 17th East Asia Inter-Regional Tourism Federation (EATOF) General Assembly in Quang Ninh, Vietnam on public-private partnerships. 

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pham Hong Long also serves on the scientific committees and editorial boards for numerous prestigious national and international journals and conferences. He is currently an Executive Board Member of the Asian Ecotourism Network (AEN), an IUCN Green List Expert, and the representative for Green Destinations in Vietnam.

Pham Hong Long, Associate Professor, PhD.

• Faculty of Tourism Studies, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University in Hanoi

• ORCID number: 0000-0003-2570-2562

• Web of Science ResearcherID is AAK-2255-2021

• Email: longph@vnu.edu.vn 

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pham Vu Phi Ho, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, was previously Vice President of Ba Ria – Vung Tau University and Vice President of Van Hien University, Vietnam. He created and designed ICTE Robots for language learners and IELTS practice. 

Pham has published more than 80 research articles in both local and International Journals, such as Computer-Assisted language Learning, SAGE Open, System, and Journal of Psycholinguist Research (25 Scopus/14 ISI), and 10 books and course-books, 3 edited books (2 Scopus-indexed) published by Springer Nature (2) and IGI Global (1) of which 3-course books were used for both the undergraduate and graduate levels at Van Lang University, HCMC Open University, Vietnam, and Lourdes College, Higher Education Department, Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines. He has international teaching experience at Suranaree University of Technology in Thailand and Gyeongju University in South Korea. He is the President of AsiaCALL. 

He is now the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of TESOL & Education. He is a managing editor of CALL-EJ (Scopus Q1), an editorial staff member for the Suranaree Journal of Social Science (Scopus Q3), and a peer reviewer for some international Journals indexed in ISI/Scopus such as Computer Assisted Language Learning, Open Sage... (Scopus), (ISI), (Google Scholar).

Professor Biljana Čubrović is Professor of English Linguistics in the Department of English, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade in Serbia, where she teaches courses in English Phonetics (BA level), English Dialectology (MA level) and Research Methods in Linguistics (PhD level). She was a visiting scholar at postdoctoral level at the Department of Linguistics at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY in 2008-2009 and 2013-2015. She has published extensively in linguistics journals, authored and co-authored several books on English Phonetics and language contact, and founded the Laboratory for Phonetic Research at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade in 2017. She is President of the Publishing Council at the Faculty of Philology and Editor-in-Chief of the Philologia Journal and Annals of the Faculty of Philology. She is a senior member of ESBB.

Assistant Professor Hui-Ju Tsai is an assistant professor in the Language Center at National Taipei University. She has over 20 years of experience in English language teaching and teacher education in higher education. Her research interests include language-learning motivation, computer-assisted language learning (CALL), collaborative online international learning (COIL), ESP curriculum design and assessment, English-medium instruction (EMI), and online writing evaluation. She has led several government-funded initiatives and intercultural collaboration projects involving international partner institutions.