Plenary Speakers

Michelle Maria Lazar (National University of Singapore)

Michelle M. Lazar is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and Assistant Dean of Research in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore. She is the founding editor of the Routledge Critical Studies in Discourse series, and serves on the editorial boards of numerous internationally refereed journals. Michelle has been closely involved in the International Gender and Language Association (IGALA) for many years and is currently its Vice-President and President-Elect. Her research centers on critical analyses of gender, heterosexuality, and postfeminism in the media.

Sibonile Ellece (University of Botswana), BA, PGDE (University of Botswana); MA, PhD (Lancaster University, UK)

Sibonile Edith Ellece is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Botswana. Her area of research and teaching is critical discourse analysis, with a specific focus on the relationship between gender and language. She also teaches language and linguistics courses such as stylistics, pragmatics, English grammar, and writing in English at both graduate and undergraduate levels. She has also supervised a number of MA research projects on discourse analysis.

One of her significant projects has been the Gender and Language in African Contexts seminar series which was co-organised with Jane Sunderland (Lancaster University), Lilian Atanga (Dschang University, Cameroon) and Lia Litosseliti (City University, London) and ran from November 2007 to April 2010.The series workshops were hosted  in Leeds, Gaborone, London, Dschang and Ile Ife(Nigeria) and culminated in two significant publications: the Gender and Language Special Issue on Gender and Language in African Contexts (Vol. 6.1) and the edited collection entitled Gender and Language in sub-Saharan Africa: Tradition Struggle and Change (2013, in press, published by John Benjamins), with contributions from Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa.

Dr. Ellece is also editor of Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies. Pula is an interdisciplinary journal that specialises on issues affecting the African continent, especially Southern Africa.

Ana Cristina Ostermann (Ph.D. from University of Michigan, USA) is a Full Professor in the Graduate Program of Applied Linguistics at UNISINOS (Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos), Brazil, and a National Researcher Fellow for CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico), Brazil. She is Past President (2010-2012) of IGALA (International Gender and Language Association) and chaired IGALA7 (7th International Gender and Language Association Conference), held for the first time in South America, in June 2012. Her research focuses on issues of gender, identities and talk at work, always investigating naturally occurring interactional data in diverse settings (doctor-patient interactions, call centers, police stations and intervention centers for gendered violence, among others). She is currently working on a project on womens´health in both face to face and telephone interactions. She has co-edited three books on gender and language (in Portuguese): Humanization, Gender and Power (2012, Mercado de Letras & Fiocruz); Language, Gender and Sexuality (2010, Parábola Editorial); Language and Gender at Work, in the Media and Other Contexts (2006, Editora da UFSC). Her manuscripts have been published in Gender and Language Journal, Discourse & Society, Language in Society, Pragmatics, Calidoscópio, Revista de Estudos Feministas, Cadernos de Saúde Pública, among others, and as book chapters in Language and Gender: A Reader (2011, Wiley-Blackwell), The International Encyclopedia of Communication (2008, Wiley-Blackwell), Language and Gender: Major Themes in English Studies (2008, Routledge). Further details of Ana Ostermann’s interests and activities may be found at: http://lattes.cnpq.br/8555609827722273