Roby Marlina
SEAMEO-RELC (Regional Language Centre), Singapore
Dr Roby Marlina is a Senior Language Specialist (Teacher-Educator) with the Training, Research, Assessment and Consultancy Department at SEAMEO-RELC, Singapore. He is also the main editor of the Scopus-indexed RELC journal. Prior to joining RELC, he was a lecturer in the Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
He has published widely in the fields of World Englishes curriculum and pedagogy, language teacher education, and intercultural education. His scholarly works have appeared in international peer-reviewed journals; and various edited books and the encyclopaedias on language teaching and teacher-education. His edited book, The Pedagogy of English as an International Language: Perspective from Scholars, Teachers, and Students, was published by Springer International Publishing. He is also the sole author of a monograph entitled Teaching English as an International Language: Implementing, Reviewing, and Re-Envisioning World Englishes in Language Education, published by Routledge (Taylor and Francis Group).
Robyn Ober
Dr Robyn Ober is a Mamu/Djirribal woman from Far North Queensland. She is a Lead Researcher and educator at Batchelor Institute and has extensive experience in the Northern Territory that spans 3-decades. She is well renowned for her expertise of both-ways pedagogy, working to combine Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing, being and learning in teaching practice and research. Dr. Ober’s PhD thesis is titled: Aboriginal English as a Social and Cultural Identity Marker in an Indigenous Tertiary Educational Context. Her educational and research leadership is internationally and nationally recognised and reflected in her numerous consultancies and research on education delivery, both-ways education, social linguistics and Indigenous research methodologies in the Northern Territory, national and international Indigenous educational contexts.
Robyn is pleased to announce the publication of a new book; Celebrating First Nations Languages and Language Learning in Australian Schools: Stories Across Generations of Language Activism, Advocacy and Allyship (1st ed.). Routledge. This book introduces key underlying principles for teaching First Nations languages and language learners in schools across a range of contexts. It takes a comprehensive approach covering traditional languages, new languages, and English.
Toni Dobinson
Toni Dobinson is professor and Discipline Lead in Applied Linguistics, TESOL/Languages in the School of Education at Curtin University in Western Australia. Her research extends across language teacher education and sociolinguistics. She is committed to qualitative research, especially linguistic ethnography, in the areas of language and identity, language and social justice, linguistic racism and translingual practices. Her current research also focuses on the experiences of migrants, refugees and international students on university campuses and in the wider local community. She received an Australian Award for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning for her culturally and linguistically responsive teaching in 2021 and was responsible for the changing of the EAL/D ATAR entry requirements in Western Australia in 2023 with her report commissioned by the School Curriculum and Standards Authority (SCSA) entitled English as an Additional Language/Dialect (EAL/D): Eligibility Research. She has published widely in high-ranking journals such as TESOL Quarterly, Language Teaching Research, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Language and Education and more. She has co-edited two volumes 1) Dobinson, T., & Dunworth, D. (Eds.) (2019). Literacy unbound: Multiliterate, multilingual, multimodal. Switzerland: Springer Nature and 2) Dovchin, S., Gong, Q., Dobinson, T., & McAlinden, M. (Eds.) (2023). Linguistic diversity and discrimination: Autoethnographies from women in academia. Routledge.
Shoshana Dreyfus
Shoshana Dreyfus is an Associate Professor at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She specialises in discourse analysis, systemic functional linguistics and academic literacy, and has over 20 years research and teaching experience in functional and applied linguistics. She has an additional background in education, in particular literacy education. Her research focuses on a diverse range of objects of study including non-verbal communication and language disorder in intellectual disability; families who have a family member with disability; activist discourse; discipline-specific academic literacy; as well as developments in systemic functional linguistic theory and discourse semantics. She also regularly speaks on ABC radio about language and linguistics and advocates for the rights of people living with severe intellectual disabilities.
She has published widely in high-ranking journals such as Discourse & Society; Social Semiotics; Discourse, Context & Media; Journal of English for Academic Purposes; International Journal of Social Research Methodology: Theory & Practice; Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability; The Australian Journal of Social Issues; and Language, Context & Text.
She has co-written the highly cited book Dreyfus, S., Humphrey, S., Mahboob, A. & Martin, J.R. Genre Pedagogy in Higher Education: The SLATE Project, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016, and has co-edited two volumes: Dreyfus, S., Hood, S., & Stenglin, M. (eds) Semiotic Margins: Meaning in Multimodalities, published in 2011 by Continuum and Zappavigna, M. & Dreyfus, S. (eds) Discourses of Hope and Reconciliation: J.R. Martin’s contribution to Systemic Functional Linguistics, published in 2020 by Bloomsbury Academic. She is currently writing and co-editing another book to be published by Palgrave: Teaching Writing in Universities around the World, which is due to be released in 2026.
In 2025 A/Prof Dreyfus won the Universities Australia People’s Choice award in the category of The Community Champion for her groundbreaking ‘All ages, all abilities’ playground project (https://www.shapingaustraliaawards.com.au/finalists/the-all-ages-all-abilities-playground-university-of-wollongong).