Melina Porto is a researcher at the National Research Council (CONICET) and Professor of English Language Education with specialism in language and intercultural education at Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina. She was the Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia (2019-2024). She has engaged with a range of non-academic partners, including primary and secondary schools, NGOs, local communities, and government and advocacy groups. She has created a large network of researchers, doctoral students, and international expert advisors, with whom she works collaboratively in research projects funded by the Argentine National Research Council and the Ministry of Science and Technology. This network includes colleagues from universities in the Global South (Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, México, Brazil, and South Africa); the United States; Australia; and Europe (UK, Cyprus, Portugal, Germany, Spain, and Bulgaria). Her research interests include intercultural language education, intercultural citizenship, human rights education, pedagogies of discomfort, the arts in language education, service learning, ethics, and, more recently, the doctorate.

Irina Golubeva is a Professor and the Co-Director of the Intercultural Leadership Certificate Program in the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics and Intercultural Communication at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (USA). She holds MA degrees in Teaching Spanish and English Languages and Literature and a PhD degree in Languages with a focus on Intercultural Communication. Her main research interests concern the development of intercultural competence and multilingual awareness, the internationalization of Higher Education, and the conceptualization of active intercultural citizenship. In 2020, she was honored to receive the Pedagogy and Teaching Award and the title of “UMBC Innovation Fellow” for her contribution to fostering inclusiveness and intercultural dialogue on campus and for enhancing students’ engagement in Internationalization at Home. In 2023, Irina Golubeva was elected a Fellow of the International Academy of Intercultural Research in recognition of her scholarly achievements and service to the profession. She is strongly committed to non-profit work and served for seven years as a Vice-President of the European Association of Teachers, and, since 2021, as a member of the Board of the International Academy of Intercultural Research.

Michael Byram is a Professor Emeritus, School of Education, Durham University (England) and a Guest Research Professor, Faculty of Classical and Modern Philology, Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski (Bulgaria). I graduated with a PhD from the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, University of Cambridge (England). I worked first in an English secondary comprehensive school as a languages teacher and then moved to Durham University as a Lecturer and eventually a Professor of Education. Research interests include language teaching, intercultural communication and the supervision and examination of doctoral students. I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science (Britain) and Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques (France).