Keynote & Invited Speakers
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Professor Bill Ashcroft Professor, School of the Arts & Media
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Bill Ashcroft is a renowned critic and theorist, founding exponent of postcolonial theory, co-author of The Empire Writes Back, the first text to offer a systematic examination of the field of postcolonial studies. He is author and co-author of twenty-one books and over 200 articles and chapters, variously translated into six languages, and he is on the editorial boards of ten international journals. His latest work is Utopianism in Postcolonial Literatures. He teaches at the University of NSW and is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. |
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Professor Giles Foden The University of East Anglia, UK |
| Giles Foden has lived in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria and India. He attended Cambridge University, where he won the Harper-Wood studentship in creative writing. He used the proceeds of this to return to Uganda and write his first novel, The Last King of Scotland, which went on to win an Oscar when adapted as a movie in 2006. He is author of three other novels, of the nonfiction book Mimi and Toutou Go Forth: The Bizarre Battle of Lake Tanganyika, and of two ghostwritten narratives charting experience of the Ugandan Asian diaspora. He has worked as a journalist – for the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian and Conde Nast Traveller – as well as an academic. Currently Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, he was previously Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick in Ireland and AHRC Research Fellow in Creative and Performing Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London. He was a judge of the MAN Booker Prize in 2007. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Granta and Esquire, among other publications. | |
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Professor Dato' Seri Dr. Md. Salleh Yaapar Professor, School of Humanities, |
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Dato’ Seri Dr. Md. Salleh Yaapar is Professor of Comparative Literature as well as Ombudsman at Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia. He is also Chairman of the Board of Governors, Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Malaysia as well as a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Malay World and Islamic Civilazation, International Islamic University Malaysia and an Adjunct Professor at Akademi Seni Budaya dan Warisan Kebangsaan (ASWARA). He was formerly the European Chair of Malay Studies, Leiden University, Netherlands. Prior to that he was Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research and Development), Deputy Vice Chancellor (Students Affairs), and Dean of the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Professor Md. Salleh obtained his Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from University of Malaya, Master of Arts from University of the Philippines, Quezon City, as well as from Temple University, Philadelphia, and Doctor of Philosophy (Distinction) also from Temple University. His areas of specialization are Comparative Literature, Literary Theory and Literature of the Malay World. He is the first recipient of the Malay Language Academic Personality Award, Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia. His significant books include Poetry and Mysticism: A Hermeneutical Reading of the Poems of Amir Hamzah (1995; 2015) and Pilgrimage to the Orient (2009). He has published in international journals such as Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion, International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, Asian Journal of Social Science, The Muslim World, Indonesia and the Malay World, Kunapipi: Journal of Postcolonial Writing & Culture, Journal of Asia Business Studies, and GEMA: Online Journal of Language Studies. |
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