David Graddol is Director of The English Company (UK) Ltd which provides consultancy and publishing services in applied linguistics, with a special focus on English language and education policy. The role of English in a multilingual Europe has long been a special research interest: David has made keynote contributions to policy forums in several European countries and he will be a plenary speaker at the 5th ALTE International Conference in Paris, April 2014 (Language assessment for multilingualism).

In The Future of English? (1997, published by The British Council) David set out a new agenda for understanding the growing importance of English as an international language and its role in globalisation. English Next (2006), provided an update on English in global education. English Next India (2010) explores the changing status of English in India. Profiling English in China: The Pearl River Delta (2013) examines public discourses and the linguistic landscapes in a part of China which is experiencing rapid change. English Next Brazil will be published in March 2014.

David worked for many years in the Faculty of Education and Language Studies at the UK Open University and during 2010-2011 was Visiting Associate Professor at City University of Hong Kong. He has worked as a consultant on ELT projects in China, India and Latin America since the early 1990s.

Martin Hilský, studied English language and literature at the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University in Prague and at Linacre College in Oxford. He is a professor of English literature at Charles University and has been awarded many prizes for his outstanding translations, essays and academic papers, amongst them - The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (2002), the Tom Stoppard Award (2002) and the Josefa Jungman Award (1997).

His contribution in the field of translation of the works of Shakespeare is impressive. In a quarter of a century, he has translated the complete dramatic works of William Shakespeare - an extraordinary achievement. The majority of his translations are accompanied by brilliant commentaries. Professor Hilský has also been active in numerous Shakespearian projects and productions for theatres, Czech Radio and Czech Television.

In addition to his work on Shakespeare, he has been busy with many other topics and projects, such as the Anglo-American poetry and drama, prose and literary criticism to which he has dedicated several of his books (Anglo-American “New” Criticism (1976), The Contemporary British Novel (1992), Modernists (1995) and The Broken Mirror (2009) to mention a few. He is also the author of numerous essays, forewords, postscripts and articles.

Yvette Hutchinson spent the first years of her career teaching English and through her partnership with the local Further Education College, taught Access courses in Education Studies and the Humanities. To prepare students for the rigorous demands of academic study, Yvette designed ‘Return to Learn’ programmes which became very popular with young women in the community. Understanding the needs of the students and their families, she worked with a group of volunteers to establish a weekend Supplementary School for primary school aged children. Through this work, she was able to successfully bring about partnerships between schools, colleges and charities - including a teacher and learner partnership with a group of schools in Jamaica.

She has since lectured in teacher training and trained teacher trainers, most recently in central Asia. Yvette has worked for Local Authorities as a Schools Officer, Widening Participation Adviser, and particularly enjoyed her role as the Adviser for newly qualified teacher induction and early career leadership.

Yvette is the Education Policy and Engagement Adviser for the British Council. She is the lead on educational content for the International School Award and manages its monitoring and evaluation. She also plays a leading role in policy dialogues with education ministries; study visits for overseas policy makers and senior leaders, and is part of the team responsible for the Education World Forum. Yvette serves as a trustee of a community soup kitchen for the homeless and has followed her interest in music and the arts to complete a Ph.D. in African American arts and culture.

Karel Oliva graduated in Computer Science in 1983, with a specialization in Computational Linguistics from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the Charles University. Between 1983 and 1988, he was a Ph.D. student in the same faculty, however, for political reasons he was not allowed to defend his Ph.D. thesis (this only happened later, in 1997, at the Faculty of Arts). It was because of this that in January 1989 he illegally left Czechoslovakia for Bulgaria and began work as a researcher in the Department of Mathematical Linguistics at the Coordination Centre of Computer Science and Computer Technology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. In October 1989 he legalized his stay abroad, and in April 1990 he became a member of the staff of the Institute of Computational Linguistics at the University of Saarland in Saarbrücken (Germany) where he defended his habilitation thesis and was awarded the title of assistant professor (Privatdozent) in General Linguistics in 2001. In November of the same year he worked as a senior researcher at the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OeFAI) in Vienna. Between June 2003 and December 2009 he served as the director of the Institute of the Czech Language ASCR.

His research activities are focused mainly on the formal syntax of natural language, including innovative approaches, which have resulted in commercial applications. He has published over 85 articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings and served as a team leader and co-author of several software packages (including a  Grammar-checker of Czech for Microsoft Office).

He is currently a member of the teaching staff at the Faculty of Arts at the Masaryk University in Brno, of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the Charles University in Prague, and the Faculty of Science at the J. E. Purkynie University in Usti nad Labem.

He serves as a member on the editorial boards of Slovo a slovesnost (Word and Literature) and Artificial Intelligence – an International Journal.

He is fluent in Bulgarian, English, German, Italian and Russian, and has a partial command of several other languages.

Lukáš Sedláček grew up in Finland and Denmark. After returning to the Czech Republic, he studied Hebrew and Religious studies at the Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague along with International Territorial Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences. After completing his undergraduate studies, he spent a semester at the University of Otago in New Zealand. When he returned, he continued with his study of International Relations and European Studies, which he finished with a doctoral degree. Later he completed his postgraduate studies in International Relations and earned a Master of Philosophy in International Relations at Cambridge University in the UK.

During his studies, Lukáš was involved in the organization of public debates. At the end of his studies he worked at the Office of the CR Government as the chief editor of Euroskop - the governmental portal. After his return from the UK, he worked as a project manager for the NGO, ANO pro Evropu, and as an analyst at the Ministry of Defence. Later he worked at Telefónica O2 as the Senior Business Development Manager and main coordinator of EU projects. For several years he has lectured at private universities in Prague and provided analyses of international and domestic affairs for various media. He is the president of the Oxford & Cambridge Alumni Society CR, which brings together graduates from Oxford and Cambridge in the Czech Republic.

Leoš Šatava, studied ethnology and history at the Institute of Ethnology at the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University in Prague. He is specializes in ethnical and language minorities (especially in Europe) from the sociolinguistic perspective. From 1996 to 2001 he was a researcher at the Lusatian Institute in Bautzen (Germany) where he was engaged in a project dedicated towards stopping the ethnical assimilation of Lusatian Sorbs and the revitalization their language. He is the author of a number of publications about ethnical minorities and languages (Ethnical Minorities in Europe, Praha, 1994; Sprachverhalten und ethnische Identität. Sorbische Schüler an der Jahrtausendwende, Bautzen, 2005; Language and Identity of Ethnical Minorities and The Possibility of Preservation and Revitalisaiton, Praha, 2009).

Mike Welch

Mike graduated from the University of Bradford in 1984. After teaching English in Spain and Japan he joined the British Council in 1990 and since then has worked for the organisation in Hong Kong, Portugal, UK, Japan, India, and Austria. He took a year out in 1995 to do an MBA at Lancaster University. Mike is currently based in Spain, where he's the IELTS Business Development Manager for Europe.