Professor Giacomo Ferrari

Doctor in historical linguistics and Sanskrit, carried some research in the field of ancient and middle Indian languages. His research interests moved to computational linguistics and in this field he carried out projects in computational morphology, syntactic parsing, semantic interpretation and computational dialogue modelling. He carried out also European and national projects in different fields of Artificial Intelligence, man-machine interface and Natural Language Processing (NLP), publishing several tens of articles, editing a special issue of the IEEE Proceedings on NLP, and publishing the only Italian handbook "Introduzione al Natural Language Processing"(1991) and a "State of the art in Computational Linguistics" (2004). He has also carried research in other fields of linguistics, as formal models, geographic language, multimodal communication and gestures. He has been teacher in the University of Pisa, University of Milan, University of Parma, and finally University of East Piedmont, where he was dean of the Faculty of Humanities (2004-2010) and founded the Interfaculty Linguistic Centre. He has been also one of the founders of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence and organized the first conference on Computational Linguistics in Pisa (1984).

Now he is retired but still teaches Cognitive Linguistics and carries research in the same field.

Professor Mario Brdar

Mario Brdar is a Professor of English Linguistics in the Department of English Language and Linguistics at Josip Juraj Strossmayer University, Osijek. He received his M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Zagreb in 1988, and his Ph.D. from the same university in 1995. He has been teaching various linguistic courses at the Department of English Language and Literature of Osijek University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences since 1985. Mario Brdar was appointed assistant professor of English linguistics in 1996, associate professor in 2002, and full professor in 2008. Between 1999 and 2014 he was also teaching as a visiting professor at the University of Tuzla, and from 2002 to 2006 at the University of Zenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina). He was the president of the Croatian Applied Linguistics Society in 2008-2010, and its vice-president in 2011-2012. From 2013 to 2017 he was the director of the postgraduate program in linguistics at the University of Osijek. Since 2012 he has been teaching cognitive linguistics at the postgraduate program in humanities at the University of Split (Croatia). He has so far supervised 20 MA and PhD theses. Since 2014 he has been associate member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

His main areas of research interests include syntax, word formation, and lexical semantics. His publications mostly deal with contrastive and functional-cognitive approach to grammatical constructions, cognitive processes such as metonymy and metaphor, lexical relationships, and lexicographical description of English. He has authored or co-authored 5 monographs, edited or co-edited 9 collections of papers, and published more than 150 articles in various edited volumes and journals. He is the editor of the linguistic journal Jezikoslovlje, and a member of the editorial board of Review of Cognitive Linguistics, ExELL. Explorations in English language and Linguistics, Bosanski jezik, and The Open Applied Linguistics Journal. He is on the editorial board of the Human Cognitive Processing series published by John Benjamins.

Professor Vlad Zegarac

Professor Stefan Oltean

Ştefan Oltean, Professor at Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, has taught possible world semantics, generative syntax and the history of the English language. He was visiting professor at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, and Cornell University. He has participated in European projects in the field of language diversity and multilingualism, and has published books in discourse analysis, narrative poetics and in semantics, as well as articles in Poetics Today, Journal of Literary Semantics and in Romanian linguistics journals. Professor Oltean was member of the Board of the European Language Council (ELC/CEL), vice rector of Babeș-Bolyai” University, dean of the Faculty of Letters and chairperson of the English Department of Babeș-Bolyai University.

Professor Senad Becirovic

Senad Bećirović, PhD, is an associate professor and the dean of the Faculty of Education and Humanities at International Burch University in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. After obtaining a master’s degree at both University of Sarajevo and University of Joensuu in Finland, Senad received his PhD from University of Sarajevo. His dissertation was a study of the intercultural education in educational systems in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Senad has more than 15 years of teaching experience at different levels and different educational institutions, including

University of Zenica, International Burch University and University of Applied Sciences Burgenland. His specific research interests include intercultural education, and foreign language learning.