Lama Alharthi holds a B.A in English Language and Translation from Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University (PNU) in Saudi Arabia. Following her graduation, she taught English as a second language at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. She then worked at PNU’s College of Languages for two years. During that time, she supervised translation students in Regional Translation Competitions in Saudi Arabia. Her administrative roles at PNU included serving as the Director of Strategic Partnerships at the College of Languages. As a versatile professional, she also engages in freelance translation and creative writing for thmanyah, a prominent Arab Media Podcast Company based in Saudi Arabia.

Lama was a student on the MSc in Translation Technology at Dublin City University (DCU) in 2023. Her PhD research lies at the intersection of language and the tourism industry, particularly within the Saudi Arabian landscape. Her focus extends beyond conventional translation methods, as she explores the potential impact of cutting-edge technologies, with a particular emphasis on Large Language Models (LLMs) and machine translation.

Muhammad Shafiq Azid holds an undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature from the International Islamic University Malaysia as well as an M.Sc. in Language Sciences from UCL. Shafiq’s PhD is funded by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia for his position as a Language Instructor at the National Defence University Malaysia where he taught English to pre-university students. Prior to the teaching position, he worked for a data company providing services in linguistic annotations and transcriptions. He also earned substantial professional translation and editing experience from the Malaysian Institute of Translation and Books for the Malay-English language pair. His PhD project seeks to explore the interplay of simplification, terminology and the Malay language in translating crisis-specific information.

Gaia Bezzi holds a B.A. in Intercultural and Linguistic Mediation from the University of Bologna, Forlì Campus (Italy), where she studied French, English and Japanese. During her studies she spent a semester at University College London. She graduated with honours and was awarded with a University of Bologna merit-based scholarship. Her thesis on Italian-into-French translation sparked the interest of Università aperta of Imola, who invited her to give a class on French literary translation during the academic year 2021-2022. She further pursued her interest in Applied Languages by completing a 2-year M.A. in Interpreting (French-English-Italian) at the same university, during which she also worked as a freelance interpreter for two international translation and interpreting agencies. Her PhD research analyses the consequences of vicarious trauma in interpreters working in crisis contexts and is fully funded by SALIS. More broadly, her research interests include translation into a second language, play studies and the role of playfulness in interpreting, crisis interpreting and translation, and crisis interpreters’ wellbeing.

Mashael Aljasser is currently a PhD student at Dublin City University. She has a strong academic background, having published three papers in the field of Translation Studies. Mashael holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature from King Saud University, as well as a Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Linguistics from Cardiff University and a Master’s degree in Specialised Translation from Princess Noura Bint Abdulrahman University.

Mashael has worked as a lecturer in the Translation Department at Princess Noura Bint Abdulrahman University in Saudi Arabia for ten years. As a result, she has experience in administration and leadership skills, having served as the director of postgraduate programs in the Faculty of Languages at Princess Noura Bint Abdulrahman University for two years.

In her PhD research, Mashael is focused on the field of crisis communication, with a significant emphasis on training translators in the field. Her primary aim is to highlight the critical importance of training translators in crisis situations, aiming to raise awareness and understanding of this specialised field.

Niav Fisher is a PhD researcher funded by the Irish Research Council. She has a B.A. (Hons) in Hispanic Studies and English, an M.A. in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), a PGCE in Primary Education and an M.A. in Translation Studies. She has over twenty years’ experience as a teacher, having worked in primary schools in the UK and taught English to Speakers of Other Languages in the Northern Ireland, Spain, Hungary and Ecuador. She is also a professional translator working from Spanish and French into English with an interest in translating academic and children’s texts. Her research is focused on children’s experience of translated and foreign language children’s texts. She aims to investigate how primary school children might creatively engage with translation practice and how this might impact their learning.

Mustafa Keshkeia was awarded a BA in English Literature and Language (2006) and an MA in Audiovisual Translation (2010) by Damascus University. Since then, he has been a professional translator from English to Arabic. From 2008 to 2018, he worked as an Interpreter/translator for the diplomatic corps in Damascus. From 2013 to 2020, he was involved in translation work for NGOs operating in Syria during the Civil War. He was also a lecturer at the Translation Department, Damascus University from 2019 to 2022. In addition, he took two courses on translation technologies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in 2020 and 2022. Mustafa’s PhD research examines the interaction of social and technical systems (individuals, communities, software, hardware) in the production and reception of multilingual and multicultural crisis communication. His research interests include crisis translation, crisis communication solutions, multimodal communication in crisis, translator training and quality assurance.

Mairéad Jordan holds a B.Ed (Hons) from DCU, a Postgraduate Diploma in Special Educational Needs (DCU), a Postgraduate Diploma in Educational Leadership (Maynooth University) and an M.A. in Children’s Literature (DCU). She has over twenty years’ experience as a primary teacher in Ireland and abroad and has worked as an Assistant Principal and education course facilitator in Wexford for over five years. Her research is funded by a DCU Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences scholarship, jointly affiliated to the School of English and the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS). It interrogates the perceived binaries of nature and culture, as a central preoccupation of ecocriticism, in a selection of visual narratives for children and young adults and asks whether the material turn can be identified in this literature, signalling a departure from a more Anthropocentric/human-centred approach. The texts to be analysed include both Anglophone and non-Anglophone texts. This research interrogates how matter and meaning constitute the fabric of our storied world, what complex narratives are communicated and how the signs and meanings of storied matter might communicate with the unique semiotics and aestheticism of multimodal texts, across languages and cultures.

Rongyu Wang holds a BA in English and Spanish Studies from Changchun Normal University (China) and an MA in Translation Studies from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain). During her undergraduate studies, she spent two years in Spain studying Spanish language and literature. She is currently a PhD student at Dublin City University and was awarded a full scholarship funded by the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS). Her research interests include audiovisual translation, subtitling and media accessibility. Her PhD research examines the role of non-verbal acoustic information in humour and explores how deaf and hard-of-hearing people could be provided with better access to audiovisual productions.

Hannah Leonard holds a B.A in Outdoor Education & Leisure from the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology; a B.A. (Hons) in Applied Language & Translation Studies with French & Spanish from Dublin City University; and an MA in Applied Linguistics and Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of Vigo, Spain. She has over ten years’ experience teaching languages through experiential education (primarily water sports) in the Gaeltacht and Irish language centres and has also taught English as a Foreign Language in Ireland and France. Her research, which is funded by the Irish Research Council (IRC), investigates the use of pedagogical translation in the teaching of Spanish as a means to improve students’ sociolinguistic competence and their ability to express their identity.

João Lucas Cavalheiro Camargo has a B. Ed. in Portuguese and English and their respective literatures from Western Paraná State University (UNIOESTE) in Brazil. He graduated with honours and was awarded a scholarship in the Institutional Scholarship Programme for Teacher Initiation granted by the Brazilian government. After graduating, João went on to do a non-graduate specialisation degree in English through distance learning and a Master’s in teaching at the same institution. In his Master’s degree research, João designed, implemented and evaluated two translation courses (one in-person and the other online) on translation hermeneutics, delivered to language graduates who wished to become translators. João was also awarded a teaching scholarship as part of the Language Without Borders programme offered by the Brazilian government, where he taught English for Specific Purposes at the Federal University for Latin American Integration. João is a Lecturer at the Western Paraná State University, teaching English language teachers, Tourism and Hospitality undergraduates. Currently, João is a PhD student funded by the School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies (SALIS) in Dublin City University. His PhD project aims to design, implement and evaluate hybrid and online teaching procedures, pedagogical materials, syllabi and courses on Translation Quality Assessment.

Mohammad Aboomar received an undergraduate degree in Commerce in 2008, and immediately switched to translation. After about eight years of experience in various translation positions in Egypt and Qatar, Mohammad moved to Ireland in 2017 to pursue an MSc in Translation Technology at DCU. Upon graduating with first class honours, he gained research experience first as a terminology fellow at the UN’s World Intellectual Property organization (WIPO) in Geneva and later as a research assistant at Trinity College Dublin. Mohammad’s PhD research at DCU, funded by the Irish Research Council, focuses on the effect of Arabic and Islamic culture on the contemporary translation of evolutionary biology. His research interests include Arabic translation, terminology, indirect translation, and corpus linguistics.

Aishowarza Manik graduated in Linguistics from the University of Dhaka (DU), Bangladesh. The focal area of her MA research at DU was ‘Syntactic acquisition process of Bengali children’. She has also successfully completed a professional MA in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (MTCSOL) from Guizhou University, China with a full scholarship awarded by the Chinese government. Her second MA research focused on the role of cognitive strategy in developing Chinese reading skills for Bengali beginner-learners of Chinese. During her MA studies, she also worked as a Chinese language instructor at a vocational university in China. Her primary research interest is in the area of Applied Linguistics, with a specific focus on the use of technology in second language acquisition. Her PhD research is concerned with the Chinese language learning context in Bangladesh. She is using an Action Research framework in her research which aims to promote learner autonomy by using mobile technology among Chinese language learners in Bangladesh. Aishowarza is funded by the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS), Dublin City University.