Prof. Dr. Obaid Hamid

School of Education

the University of Queensland, Australia

Keynote Speaker 1: Prof. Dr. Arndt Graf

(Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Goethe-University of Frankfurt, Germany).

Biography:

Professor Arndt Graf obtained his doctorate (PhD) in Austronesian Languages and Cultures from the University of Hamburg. The University of Hamburg also awarded him the title of Doctor of Philosophy Habilitation in 2004, based on his second PhD thesis. The Habilitation degree received by Arndt Graf is an official recognition for him representing two academic fields, namely, Austronesian Languages and Cultures and Southeast Asian Studies as a professor.

Professor Graf is a language expert himself. He is fully proficient and has teaching experience in English, Malay, Indonesian, French, and German (native speaker).

Other languages studied are Latin, Old Javanese, Javanese, and Tagalog.

At the international level, Arndt Graf was invited as a visiting lecturer at Cornell University (1998−1999). He was also invited as a guest professor at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta, Indonesia (2004). In addition, he also taught French as a visiting professor at the University of La Rochelle, France (2005−2006) and English as a visiting lecturer at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark (2006). Prof. Graf is actually a no-stranger to Malaysia. Back in 2002, he was appointed as a Visiting Fellow at Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, and from 2007-2009, he served at the Department of Literature, School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia, as an associate professor, was subsequently appointed as a professor in August 2009.

Publications produced by Arndt Graf often focus on interdisciplinary contexts in literature, rhetoric, and media in Indonesia and Malaysia. Until now, he has successfully produced various works, including monographs, edited books, papers in international scientific journals, contributions to edited books, and other publications. Arndt Graf has been appointed as a member of the International Advisory Board, Indonesia, and the Malay World journal, London; a reviewer for Asien: The German Journal of Contemporary Asia and The Asian Journal of Social Science, Singapore journals; and an editorial board member for Lingua Franca Al-Jami’ah journal, Universitas Islam Negeri Syarif Hidayatullah. He has also been appointed as one of the six members of the Advisory Council for Southeast Asia of the German Association for Asian Studies. In recognition of his contribution and excellence over the years, he was recently appointed as a professor and holder of the Southeast Asian Studies Chair at the University of Frankfurt, starting in October 2009.

Keynote Speaker 2: Assoc. Prof. Dr Sarimah Shamsudin 

Dr. Sarimah Shamsudin is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with more than 25 years of teaching experience and to date has received three Excellent Service Awards from UTM, in 2008, 2013 and 2020.

She held several admin posts throughout her career in UTM such as Director (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities) (FSSH, UTM KL), Head of Language Department (Language Academy, UTM KL), Acting Deputy Dean (Language Academy, UTM KL), Head of Language Lab and Multimedia Lab (FPPSM, UTM JB), Coordinator of Language Lab (Language Academy, UTM KL), Head of English Language Panel and Head of Testing and Evaluation or Moderation Committee (Language Academy, UTM JB & UTM KL), and Felo of Kolej Tun Fatimah and Kampung Belian (UTM JB).

She obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Mathematics from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, Post-Graduate Diploma in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) from Institute Technology MARA, Malaysia, Masters of Science in Teaching English for Specific Purposes (TESP) from Aston University, Birmingham, UK and PhD in English Language Teaching (ELT) and Applied Linguistics from The University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.

Her PhD thesis was on Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP): An Investigation of the Use of Synchronous CMC to Meet the Needs of Computer Science Students and her Masters thesis was on Development of Web-Based Civil Engineering Materials Specialised Vocabulary List Via Corpus-Based Analysis of Civil Engineering Materials Textbooks.

She has presented papers at international conferences in various countries such as the USA, Ireland, UK, Poland, UAE, Turkey, Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia. She was an Invited or Keynote Speaker in several international conferences in Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran and Japan. She has also published papers in indexed and non-indexed journals as well as indexed and non-indexed conference proceedings.

Apart from that, she has had experience obtaining a few millions in ringgit Malaysia of infrastructure development funding to set up and manage Digital Language Labs in UTM Johor Bahru and Kuala Lumpur and received almost half a million of ringgit Malaysia of local and international research funding as the main or coresearcher to implement research related to English language learning, teaching and learning using technology, cognitive abilities, development of corpus-based materials and corpus-based analysis of discourse.

She is also continuously invited to review journal articles and conference papers both locally and abroad and has successfully graduated twelve PhD students and filed thirteen copyrights with her PhD and Masters graduates. She has examined nine PhD candidates as Internal Examiner and seven as External Examiner. Her research interests are in the areas of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Corpus Linguistics, English Language Teaching (ELT) and English for Specific Purpose (ESP).

Keynote Speaker 3: Dr Obaidul Hamid

Dr Obaidul Hamid is Associate Professor of TESOL Education at the University of Queensland, Australia. His teaching and research focus on the policy and pedagogy of TESOL in Asian countries. His works have been published in a wide range of journals including Language Policy, Language in Society, Current Issues in Language Planning, TESOL Quarterly, ELT Journal, and World Englishes. He co-edited Language Planning for Medium of Instruction in Asia (Routledge, 2014). He is on the editorial boards of Current Issues in Language Planning, Discourse, English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Journal of Asia TEFL and Asiatic.