Sian Dafydd is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature and English at The American University of Paris, specializing in creative writing, literary translation, and Welsh literature. Her work explores intersections between writing practices and yoga, with cross-genre narratives and international collaborations. She won the Literary Medal at the 2009 National Eisteddfod for her novel Y Trydydd Peth . Her publications include fiction, poetry, translations, and creative non-fiction that examine cultural identity, memory, and bilingual expression. Current projects involve collaborations with Indian writers and translations of Rabindranath Tagore's works. Dafydd serves as Creative Fellow of Aberystwyth University and edits the Welsh literary review Taliesin , nurturing new voices in literature.
Ineke Mennen is Professor of Applied English Linguistics at the University of Graz, where she heads research in phonetics and bilingualism. She previously held the Chair of Bilingualism and Linguistics at Bangor University and positions at Edinburgh, Newcastle, and Queen Margaret universities. Her research investigates intonation systems across languages, examining how differences emerge in speech production, perception, and acquisition. Current FWF-funded project 'When your native language sounds foreign' explores L1 phonetic attrition. Her work combines acoustic analysis with perceptual experiments to understand bilingual speech patterns. Dr. Mennen has secured funding from ESRC, AHRC, FWF, and British Academy. She supervises doctoral research on L1 attrition, bilingual acquisition, and sociophonetic variation. Recent publications examine plasticity of native intonation in migrant populations.
Dr. Irene Reppa is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Swansea University , with a D.Phil. from Bangor University. She previously served as a Research Officer at Bangor before joining Swansea in 2003. Her research spans four core areas: Object Recognition (focusing on shape and surface properties), Object-Based Attention and Memory (inhibitory mechanisms), Perception and Action (information extraction guiding behavior), and Aesthetic Appeal (impact on performance and cognition). Her work has received funding from Unilever SR-Research Ltd. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Leverhulme Trust Wales Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) She is affiliated with the Awen Institute at Swansea University and supervises PhD students in object perception, aesthetics, and mindfulness. Her teaching includes modules on cognition, aesthetics, and independent research projects.
Dennis De Widt is an Associate Professor (Reader) in Accounting and Finance at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. His research focuses on public sector accounting and taxation with particular emphasis on public audit, tax administration, and local government finances across multiple countries including the UK, Germany, Netherlands, United States, and South Africa. His research interests encompass Intergovernmental and local government finances , Public budgeting and accounting , Public sector auditing , and Tax policy and administration (including transfer pricing). His work takes an interdisciplinary and internationally comparative approach, examining institutional dimensions of public financial management across different governance contexts. His recent publications reveal a strong focus on cooperative tax compliance models, public sector audit innovation, and the institutional pressures affecting tax administration systems. His research spans both traditional public finance topics and emerging areas where technology intersects with public financial management, such as AI applications in customs classification. Visiting Professorship, Université de Poitiers, L'Institut d'administration des entreprises (IAE), spring 2025 Wiley award Top Cited Article in Financial Accountability & Management, 2023 Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) De Widt actively supervises doctoral students and has served as external examiner at institutions including University of Leicester and University of the Witwatersrand. He holds significant grant funding including the Cardiff University-University of Illinois System Grants Programme award (£4,000, 2025) and European Parliament Subcommittee on Tax Matters funding (£12,500, 2022). He contributes to policy through roles as Independent Adviser to the Welsh Government's Local Government Finance Distribution Sub-Group and as Executive Board Member of the British Accounting & Finance Association Special Interest Group for Public Services and Charities. He leads the Public Sector Accounting, Finance and Taxation Research Group (PACCFINTAX) at Cardiff Business School and serves as Associate Research Fellow of the Tax Administration Research Centre at the University of Exeter Business School.
Dr. Catherine Jones is a Reader and Director of the Wales Autism Research Centre at Cardiff University's School of Psychology. Her work focuses on understanding autism through perceptual processing mechanisms, including sensory and temporal processing, and improving outcomes for autistic individuals. She leads projects on autism diagnosis, co-occurrence with eating disorders, and multi-sensory environment research. Jones has been recognized with Cardiff University's Healthcare and People's Choice Awards (2019) for her contributions. Education: BSc Psychology (First Class Honours, UCL), PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience (UCL Institute of Neurology). Research Interests: Sensory processing, temporal perception, autism-anorexia overlap, and neurodiversity advocacy. Her research highlights the importance of sensory environments and diagnostic tools like the Signposting Questionnaire for Autism (SQ-A). Collaborations with Welsh Government and European partners emphasize public awareness and professional training. Jones supervises PhD students exploring autism and eating disorders, and she teaches developmental psychology and neurodevelopmental disorders at Cardiff University. Key projects include the SEDAF initiative on autism-anorexia links and the Wales Autism Research Centre's multi-sensory environment studies. Her work bridges clinical practice and academic research, aiming to enhance support for autistic individuals.
Neil Mac Parthalain is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Aberystwyth University. He holds degrees including a BSc from Cardiff University, an MSc from the University of Wales, and a PhD from the University of Wales. His research focuses on computational intelligence, with particular emphasis on feature selection, fuzzy-rough sets, data reduction, and their applications in healthcare and engineering. He has led projects such as 'An intelligent approach to bed occupancy modelling to enhance patient care' (2018–2021) and 'Improved modelling techniques for mammographic image analysis' (2012–2014). His work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals related to good health and well-being. Key research areas include fuzzy inference systems, reinforcement learning, and three-way classification models. His publications span journals like IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems and PLOS Digital Health, addressing topics such as hospital length of stay prediction and component failure analysis. Collaborations include researchers in mechanical engineering, geology, and robotics. He has supervised 7 doctoral students and contributed to conference proceedings such as the UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence. Media coverage highlights his insights on AI's impact on Welsh language poetry and healthcare systems.
Jose Camacho Collados is a Professor at Cardiff University's School of Computer Science and Informatics, leading the Cardiff NLP group. He is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow since 2021 and has held roles including General Chair of *SEM 2024. His research focuses on NLP, particularly lexical semantics, distributional semantics, and social media analysis. Key contributions include the RelBERT model, the TweetNLP platform, and benchmarks like WiC and SuperTweetEval. He holds a PhD from Sapienza University of Rome and has worked at ATILF-CNRS. Notable awards include the AIJ 2023 Prominent Paper Award and the Welsh Chess Champion title. His work spans multilingual NLP, temporal language models (TimeLMs), and ethics in AI. Education: Erasmus Mundus Master in Natural Language Processing, BSc in Mathematics (5-year), and a Google Doctoral Fellowship. Research emphasizes integrating knowledge resources (e.g., BabelNet) with NLP applications. Active in organizing challenges like SemEval and promoting open datasets. Supervises PhD students and advocates for reproducible research through platforms like TweetEval. Awards highlight his scientific contributions, including the 2023 AIJ award and fellowship recognitions. His work on social media analysis addresses mental health, misinformation, and public health monitoring. A passionate advocate for NLP education, he teaches and publishes extensively on embeddings and their applications.
Dr. Thomas Reitmaier is a Lecturer in Computer Science at Swansea University's Faculty of Science and Engineering. He is part of the Department of Computer Science and holds an ORCID identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2078-6699 . His research focuses on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), particularly in under-served communities. Key areas include speech technologies for low-resource languages, IoT applications for aging populations, and co-design methodologies with global south communities. He has supervised a current PhD student on water systems reinforcement learning at Dwr Cymru (Welsh Water), collaborating with Dr. Sara Sharifzadeh. Teaching includes advanced object-oriented programming (CSC371), covering C/C++ and foundational programming concepts. His work bridges technical innovation with ethical considerations, emphasizing community engagement and equitable technology access. Recent research highlights include developing self-powered smart materials for slum communities, rethinking public touch interfaces during pandemics, and advancing speech recognition for under-heard languages. His interdisciplinary approach integrates computer science with sociological and anthropological insights.
Steve Morris is a Researcher in Applied Linguistics at Swansea University's School of Culture and Communication (College of Arts and Humanities). With over 30 years of experience in Welsh language education and policy, he has contributed significantly to sociolinguistics, language planning, and corpus linguistics. He joined the university in 1991 as a lecturer in Continuing Education before transferring to his current role in 2010. His research focuses on the interdisciplinary interface between Applied Linguistics and Welsh language revitalization. Notable contributions include founding the ALAW network (2017) and co-leading the National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh (CorCenCC) project. He serves on key committees like the Welsh Government’s Welsh for Adults Scrutiny Committee and the Higher Education Academy. Key achievements include policy-influencing work on Welsh language centers (Canolfannau Cymraeg) and developing core vocabulary lists for adult learners aligned with Common European Framework levels. His work bridges research, policy, and education through collaborative projects with national and EU institutions. Publications span corpus linguistics, language policy, and pedagogical strategies, with recent focus on Welsh lexical analysis and educational tool development. Awards include Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.
Dr. Ignatius Ezeani is a Research Fellow in the Department of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University, specializing in Low-Resource Natural Language Processing (LowResNLP). His work focuses on developing tools and methods for under-resourced languages, particularly African languages such as Igbo, and minority languages like Welsh. He leads projects such as the Igbo-English Machine Translation initiative and the Welsh Summary Creator, advancing computational linguistics in these domains. His research interests include machine translation, part-of-speech tagging, named entity recognition, and corpus-based approaches to language processing. He is affiliated with the University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language (UCREL), contributing to data science and linguistic resource development. Ezeani supervises PhD student Chiamaka Chukwuneke and collaborates on initiatives like the National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh (CorCenCC). His projects emphasize participatory research, ensuring technologies address real-world linguistic needs in underrepresented communities. Key contributions include the IgboAPI Dataset, IgboBERT models, and frameworks for spatial narrative analysis. Ezeani’s work bridges computational linguistics with societal impact, fostering multilingualism through technology.
Dr. John Cunningham is a Senior Lecturer in Music at Bangor University’s School of Arts, Culture and Language, with a focus on secular vocal and instrumental music in the British Isles (1600–1870), seventeenth-century English consort music, and the interplay between music and cultural history. He has published extensively on composers like William Lawes, Ben Jonson, and Shakespeare, and explores modern popular music’s links to visual culture. Education: PhD in Music (University of Leeds, 2007), MA and BMus (University College Dublin, 2001 and 2000). Research: Covers music as cultural history, editing historical compositions, Shakespearean music, opera in non-Western contexts, and popular music analysis. Awards: Senior Fellow (2019) and Fellow (2015) of the Higher Education Academy. Leadership: Held roles including Head of Department of Music, Drama and Performance (2022–24), Director of Research, and Digital Ambassador. Students: Supervises PhD students like Yining Li and Luxi Tian, with completed students including Stephen Bullamore. Projects: Currently examines musical censorship in popular culture and Shakespeare’s music, funded by Bangor University’s Innovation and Impact Award for Welsh identity studies.
Dr Gwennan Higham is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Welsh at Swansea University's School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. She specializes in Welsh sociolinguistics with a focus on the linguistic integration of international migrants in Wales, conducting research with international scope including comparative work with French in Quebec. Her academic journey began with an AHRC-funded PhD at Cardiff University on Welsh learning among international migrants as a route to inclusive citizenship. She joined Swansea University in 2016 as a Lecturer and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2020. Her educational background demonstrates strong expertise in Welsh language, migration studies, and sociolinguistics. Dr Higham's research centers on how minority languages like Welsh serve as pathways to inclusive citizenship for migrants. She investigates the experiences of migrants learning Welsh and how this contributes to their integration, agency, and sense of belonging in Wales. Her work challenges monolingual norms traditionally adopted for adult migrant language instruction, advocating for multilingual approaches that recognize the value of minority languages in integration processes. Her recent publications reveal a consistent focus on linguistic integration, minority language policies, and the role of Welsh in creating multicultural citizenship. These works demonstrate her interdisciplinary approach combining sociolinguistics, migration studies, and language policy, with particular attention to practical applications in community settings and educational contexts. Learned Society of Wales' Dillwyn Medal for early career research excellence (2020) Active member of Welsh Government's Commission for Welsh-Speaking Communities Co-Investigator on international Leverhulme project on linguistic integration ethics Dr Higham actively supervises PhD students on topics related to Welsh language learning, migration, and linguistic integration. She leads the AHRC-funded impact project 'Pathways to the Welsh Language for International Migrants' in partnership with IAITH: Welsh Centre for Language Planning. Her research has secured funding from prestigious organizations including the AHRC, ESRC, Welsh Government, and Leverhulme Trust. She also serves on the Welsh Government's Commission for Welsh-Speaking Communities and contributes to policy development through her expertise in language planning and migrant integration.
Alys Conran is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the School of Language, Culture and the Arts, Bangor University. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Manchester (2012) and an MA in English Literature from the University of Edinburgh (2004). MA Creative Writing, University of Manchester MA (Scot) English Literature, University of Edinburgh Her research and creative practice focuses on postcolonial literature, cross-cultural understanding, and the intersection of Welsh identity with global narratives. Her work often explores fragmented family histories, colonial legacies, and the psychological dimensions of characters navigating personal and cultural dissonance. Recent publications include the novel Dignity (2019), which interrogates British Empire history through three female protagonists, and the experimental article 'Gathering Evidence' (2024) analyzing postcolonial everyday life. Her 2023 animated short story The Changing Days bridges Wales and Bangladesh in climate change discourse. Hay Festival Creative Wales International Fellowship (2019) Wales Book of the Year Award (2017) Rhys Davies Fiction Prize (2017) Wales Arts Review People's Choice Award (2017) International Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlist (2017) Conran's literary output spans novels, poetry, essays, and radio dramas, with works like Pigeon (2016) becoming GCSE syllabus material. She supervises creative writing students and contributes to cultural initiatives like the National Centre for Writing's International Literature Showcase (2020).
Anja Belz is a Professor at Dublin City University's School of Computing, specializing in Natural Language Processing research. She leads the Natural Language Processing Research Group and has established herself as a leading expert in human evaluation methodologies, reproducibility in NLP, and data-to-text generation systems. Her work bridges theoretical research and practical applications with significant contributions to medical text generation and evaluation standards. Her research interests center on creating robust evaluation frameworks for NLP systems, with particular focus on human evaluation methodologies, reproducibility assessment, and quality criteria standardization. She has pioneered work on the Human Evaluation Data Sheet (HEDS) and the QCET (Quality Criteria for Evaluation Taxonomy), addressing critical gaps in evaluation comparability across NLP research. Her work on reproducibility spans multiple shared tasks (ReproNLP, ReproGen) that have become benchmarks in the field, examining how different experimental conditions affect evaluation outcomes. Analysis of her recent publications reveals a clear research trajectory focused on making NLP evaluation more rigorous, transparent, and comparable. Her work increasingly incorporates large language models while maintaining critical scrutiny of their evaluation methodologies. She has made significant contributions to understanding when LLM-based evaluation correlates with human judgments, and has developed frameworks for assessing the reproducibility of NLP evaluation results in quantified terms. Professor Belz has organized numerous workshops and shared tasks focused on human evaluation and reproducibility in NLP, including multiple ReproNLP shared tasks that have attracted international participation. Her research has been consistently published in top-tier NLP conferences including ACL, EMNLP, and INLG, with a strong emphasis on methodological rigor and practical applicability to real-world NLP evaluation challenges. She has also contributed significantly to NLP research in under-resourced languages, particularly Irish, Welsh, Breton, and Maltese. Her work on medical text generation has practical implications for healthcare applications, particularly in automating clinical documentation and systematic reviews. She has developed methods for biomedical synthesis generation that could significantly reduce the time and cost of keeping medical practitioners updated with research. Her research on consultation checklists aims to standardize the human evaluation of medical note generation systems, addressing critical challenges in clinical safety and quality assessment.
Dr. Sarah Cooper is a Lecturer at the School of Arts, Culture and Language, Bangor University. Her research focuses on Welsh phonetics, bilingualism, and language technologies for under-resourced languages, particularly how adults learn Welsh sounds. She leads the MSc Language Technologies program and collaborates with the Language Technologies Unit in Canolfan Bedwyr. Her work includes developing the Paldaruo Speech Corpus, a key resource for Welsh speech technology. Teaches phonetics, bilingualism, and second language phonetics/phonology. Supervises PhD students and has published extensively on Welsh linguistics, speech technology, and bilingualism. Recipient of the 'Fantastic Feedback' Student Led Teaching Award (2015). Research highlights include studies on Rett syndrome's impact on bilingual speech, Welsh accent acquisition, and speech recognition systems for Welsh. She actively contributes to conferences and collaborates internationally on projects like synthetic voice development for Welsh-speaking children.
