H.E Dr. Ali Bin Tamim

Chairman of Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre 

Prof. Anthony Pym

Distinguished Professor of Translation and Intercultural Studies, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain

Bio:

Prof. Anthony Pym is Distinguished Professor of Translation and Intercultural Studies at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain, and holds honorary positions at universities in Australia, the UK, and South Africa. With a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), he has held senior posts worldwide, including President of the European Society for Translation Studies (2010–16) and Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Melbourne (2017–24).

A prolific scholar, Prof. Pym has published 17 monographs, 15 edited volumes, and over 270 refereed articles and chapters. His recent works include Risk Management in Translation (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and How to Augment Language Skills: Generative AI and Machine Translation in Language Learning and Translator Training(Routledge, 2024). His research spans translation literacies, AI-assisted translation, multilingual education, and crisis communication. With an h-index of 64 and over 22,000 citations, he is among the most influential voices in Translation Studies today.

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Prof. Saad Albazei

Saudi scholar, literary critic, translator, and intellectual.

Bio:

Prof. Saad Albazei, a leading Saudi critic, translator,and cultural figure, has shaped Arab literary and intellectual life for decades. With a PhD in Anglo-American literature from Purdue University, he has served as professor at King Saud University, editor-in-chief of Riyadh Daily and the Global Arabic Encyclopedia, president of the Riyadh Literary Club, and member of the Saudi Shura Council. Internationally, he chaired the 2014 Booker Prize committee and served on UNESCO’s International Fund for the Promotion of Culture.

Currently president of the Golden Pen Award and board member of Saudi Arabia’s Literature, Publishing, and Translation Commission, Prof. Albazei has authored around 30 influential books and translated major works by Zygmunt Bauman, Paul Auster, and others. His contributions have earned him numerous prestigious awards, including the Sultan Qaboos Award for Literary Criticism (2017) and the Doha Arabic Book Award (2024)

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Prof. Wole Soyinka

Laureate of Nobel Prize for Literature, Professor of Theater at NYU-Abu Dhabi.

Bio:

Wole Soyinka is a towering figure in world literature and a multifaceted artist-dramatist, poet, essayist, musician, philosopher, academic, teacher, human rights activist, global artist, and scholar. He has won international acclaim for his verse, as well as for novels such as Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth. His works encompass drama, poetry, novels, music, film, and memoirs. He is the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the author of several collections of poetry, including Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems, two novels, books of essays, and memoirs, including The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness, and numerous plays. Soyinka has held positions at several higher education institutions, including Harvard, Yale, Duke, Emory, and Loyola Marymount in the US, as well as highly regarded institutions throughout Africa and Europe.

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Prof. Moneera Al-Ghadeer 

UNESCO Chair in Translating Cultures 

King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, Saudia Arabia

Bio:

Prof. Moneera Al-Ghadeer holds the UNESCO Chair in Translating Cultures at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She was a Visiting Professor at Columbia University and Harvard University, a tenured professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her book, Desert Voices: Bedouin Women’s Poetry in Saudi Arabia (I.B. Tauris/American University in Cairo Press, 2009), is the first English translation and theoretical analysis of Bedouin women’s oral poetry from Saudi Arabia. She has published articles, book chapters, and translations through Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, Bloomsbury Publishing, and Two Lines Press. Recently, she completed the translation of five poetry collections by Badr Bin Abdulmohsin. Among her edited books are Tracing the Ether: Contemporary Poetry from Saudi Arabia (Syracuse University Press, 2025) and the forthcoming co-edited book, Translating Cultures in the Arab World: New Histories and Geographies (Routledge, 2026).

 

Prof. Neil Murphy

Associate Provost and Professor of English at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore

Bio:

Neil Murphy is a Professor of English at NTU, Singapore, and has previously taught at the University of Ulster and the American University of Beirut. He studied at University College Galway (BA & MA), and University College Dublin (PhD). He is the author of Irish Fiction and Postmodern Doubt (2004) and editor of Aidan Higgins: The Fragility of Form (2010). He has co-edited (with Keith Hopper) a special Flann O’Brien centenary issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction (2011) and The Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien (2013).

He has also co-edited (with Keith Hopper) a four book series related to the work of Dermot Healy, including a scholarly edition of Fighting with Shadows (2015), as well as Dermot Healy: The Collected Short Stories (2015), Dermot Healy: The Collected Plays (2016), and Writing the Sky: Observations and Essays on Dermot Healy (2016). His monograph, John Banville (2018) was published by Bucknell University Press, and he is a co-editor of the Routledge Companion to Death and Literature (2021). More recently, he has co-edited the Routledge Companion to Literature and Art (2023).

Prof. Eddie Tay

Professor of Creative Writing and Literature and Director of Research Center for Human Values at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), China

Bio:

Eddie Tay’s research interests are in the areas of creative writing, street photography and the literatures of Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. He teaches Children’s Literature, Reading Poetry and Creative Writing at the Department of English, Chinese University of Hong Kong. He also teaches a Special Topics in Genre Studies MA course that focuses on social media, writing and photography.

His book, Colony, Nation, and Globalization (2011) was jointly published by Hong Kong University Press and National University of Singapore Press. It is a reading of literary texts from Singapore and Malaysia that engages with colonialism, nationalism and globalization. His second academic book, Anything You Can Get Away With: Creative Practices (2018), is a hybrid work that uses the languages of critical theory and creative writing. Attesting to a “creative turn” in his research trajectory, it combines the genres of street photography, poetry and autoethnography. His four poetry books are Remnants (2000), A Lover’s Soliloquy (2005), The Mental Life of Cities (2010) and Dreaming Cities (2016).

He is also interested in how academic research may benefit the wider community. He has conducted professional development seminars on teaching poetry and creative writing for teachers on behalf of the Education Bureau. He has also conducted creative writing and street photography workshops for secondary school students in Singapore and Hong Kong and has given talks at Tai Kwun and other cultural spaces and art galleries. He has also been involved in programs for students organized by NGOs such as the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education and Kids4Kids. He was a panel judge for the biennial Singapore Literature Prize (English language creative nonfiction category) in 2020.