San Jorge University
PhD in International Education and Master of Arts in Comparative International Development Education from the University of Minnesota, USA. Vice Dean of Internationalization at the School of Communication and Social Sciences at Universidad San Jorge, Zaragoza, Spain. Professor and researcher at the Group Migrations, Interculturalism and Human Development.
Her research interests are intercultural communication, international education focusing on the internationalization of higher education, topics and areas in which she has developed research and published articles and book chapters.
Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz
University of Córdoba
Víctor Pavón Vázquez is a Professor at the University of Córdoba, where he teaches pronunciation, EFL methodology, and bilingual education. He is a member of the CRUE Language Accreditation Commission, the current General Director of Linguistic Policy, and the Director of the UCO Idiomas Language Center at the University of Córdoba.
As a professor and researcher, he actively participates in educational bilingualism programs. His current interests focus on researching the outcomes of bilingual education programs and training teachers in specific competencies for these types of programs.
Bilingual Education Association
He holds a degree in French Philology from Complutense University of Madrid and is a Professor of French.
He has served as Education Advisor at the Spanish Embassy in London, Director of the “Las Acacias” Regional Innovation and Training Center, General Director for the Improvement of Teaching Quality at the Ministry of Education of the Community of Madrid, General Director of Evaluation and Territorial Cooperation at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, and Education Advisor at the Spanish Embassy in Washington.
In the Community of Madrid, he was responsible for the development of bilingual education in primary school, the design and implementation of bilingual education at the secondary level, the management of the language assistant program, teacher training, and the development of specific training for the bilingual program.
He directed the EICE 2016 Congress and is the Director of the CIEB International Congresses on Bilingual Education. He is the author of various publications and has given numerous presentations and lectures. He is currently the President of the Bilingual Education Association and Vice-President of Professionals for International Education.
National Association for Bilingual Education - NABE
Throughout her career as an educator, Nilda Aguirre has been driven to improve outcomes for English Learners through the use of best practices, cutting edge strategies, community involvement and advocacy. As the Executive Director for the National Association for Bilingual Education, she will continue to support NABE’s mission of advocating for educational equity and excellence for bilingual/multilingual students in a global society.
Having served as a classroom teacher, administrator, and professional development consultant, Nilda has a distinguished career as an educator. She has developed innovative curriculum embedded with best practices for ELs and strategies for Gifted and Talented ELs, and was the National Director for Project GOTCHA©, a Title VII, Academic Excellence Program awarded by the United States Department of Education for Gifted and Talented English Learners. She has designed and implemented professional development programs for school systems in the US, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, and Europe. Nilda has also authored numerous publications, including curriculum guides for various state education agencies, newspaper and magazine articles, and several book chapters.
Ms. Aguirre holds an Education Specialist Degree in Educational Supervision and Leadership, Master’s Degree in Special Education, Gifted and Talented, and is certified in ESOL, Multicultural Studies, Secondary Education, Curriculum Development, Cultural Competency. Nilda is proficient in Spanish and English.
American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese - AATSP
SEPIE
Andrea Lejarza Ferrer is a Technical Teaching Advisor (ATD) in the School Education and Adult Education Unit at SEPIE, where she works on the management and dissemination of the Erasmus+ program in the School Education and Adult Education sectors.
Trained in Early Childhood Education, Primary Education, and Foreign Language, as well as a teacher of Spanish for immigrant students at the University of Zaragoza. With more than 25 years of experience in educational centers as a teacher and head of studies, she has spent most of her career in challenging schools. There she has acquired solid experience in project coordination, attention to diversity, educational inclusion, and supporting students and their families in adverse situations, promoting inclusive educational practices and personalized attention to students.
She currently contributes to the development of European mobility projects that foster cooperation between institutions, pedagogical innovation, and the internationalization of education, convinced of the value of European collaboration to achieve more inclusive, equitable, and quality education.
University of Alcalá
Dr. García Laborda, a University Professor of Language and Literature Didactics, holds a degree in English Philology (1988, UCM), an MA in ESL (University of Georgia), an MA in Comparative Language and Literature (University of Wisconsin), a PhD in English Philology, and a European Doctorate in Didactics (UCM). He has four teaching periods, three research periods, and one transfer period. He has been a professor at the University of Georgia and the University of Wisconsin, and a Visiting Scholar at Penn State University and the University of Antwerp, teaching internationally in Europe, Asia, and America. He is also currently a research advisor for Ablai Khan and Abai Universities in Kazakhstan and collaborates with the Azerbaijan University of Languages; additionally, he serves as coordinator and researcher for the UNIE Education Doctorate.
He has been a principal investigator in four R projects and participated in eight others, in addition to directing six teaching innovation projects. Since 2013, he has led the RELTS High Performance research group. Between 2019 and 2025, he was Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Alcalá and previously director of the Department of Modern Philology. He is also a member of the School Council of Castilla La Mancha.
He is currently the Academic Director of the Cardenal Cisneros University Center and president of the ACPUA Humanities commission. He has over 270 publications (+170 in WoS) and specializes in language teaching, teacher training, assessment, and educational technology.
San Jorge University
Rey Juan Carlos University
She holds a degree in English Philology from the University of Valencia, an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Sheffield, an MA in Language Assessment from Lancaster University, and a PhD from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. With over 20 years of experience in foreign language teaching, she has developed her professional career across various educational levels, from Primary Education to University Education, in both the United Kingdom and Spain. Alongside teaching, she has coordinated the design and quality control of ACLES certification exams and has actively participated in methodological training for teachers in the plurilingualism programs of the Valencian Community, delivering courses on assessment in the CLIL context. Additionally, she has served as director of the Master’s in Bilingual Education at the International University of Valencia.
She is currently an Assistant Professor at Rey Juan Carlos University. Her research areas focus on foreign language assessment, the CLIL approach, multiliteracy, and interculturality.
Rey Juan Carlos University - URJC
She holds a degree in English Philology from the University of Granada and a PhD from Rey Juan Carlos University. With over 25 years of experience in education, she has developed her professional career at all educational levels, from Early Childhood Education to University Education, in both Spain and the United Kingdom.
She is a Teaching and Research Professor at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, where she teaches L2 didactics and CLIL methodology in Early Childhood and Primary Education degrees, as well as in the Master’s in Secondary Education Teacher Training. She directs the Master’s in Bilingual Education in Primary Education Centers and English Language Immersion.
She has actively participated in the methodological training of teachers from bilingual schools in the Community of Madrid, delivering courses on CLIL, and collaborates with CEU Cardenal Herrera in Valencia on the University Master’s in English and Spanish Bilingual Education. She has given presentations in Spain and the United States, and her research area focuses on bilingual education and CLIL methodology. She is Vice-President of the Bilingual Education Association and co-editor of the American journal NABE Journal of Research and Practice.
APPI
Catholic University of Murcia
Dr. Ana Isabel García Abellán has over 20 years of experience in bilingual education. As a lecturer and researcher at the Catholic University of Murcia (UCAM), she has dedicated her career to teaching and training future education professionals, in addition to leading innovative projects in the area of language teaching. Throughout her career, she has worked in various educational contexts, from Early Childhood, Primary, and Secondary Education, where she coordinated and implemented bilingual programs based on the CLIL approach, to teacher training for public and private institutions.
She has collaborated with organizations such as the Ministry of Education of the Region of Murcia and Oxford University Press, designing educational materials such as book series and digital content, and serving as a pedagogical advisor and teacher trainer. Her research focuses on bilingual education, especially in early foreign language acquisition, innovation in the bilingual classroom, and the perceptions of different educational agents in bilingual school contexts.
University of Castilla-La Mancha
Esther Nieto Moreno de Diezmas is the Chair of the Department of Modern Languages of the University Castilla-La Mancha, and Director of the IG DiLeAr.
Her main research interests revolve around bilingualism and bilingual education from infant to tertiary education. She is currently leading a research project (UCLM-FEDER), an innovation project on teacher training and collaboration in English-Medium instruction and a Project funded by the FECYT on the integration of Science and Arts: “CLAP”.
CARLEE
Belén Embid holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education and an official Master’s Degree in Bilingual Education. She is the director of CARLEE (Aragonese Center for Foreign Languages for Education), a collaborator in the CLIL Postgraduate Program at the University of Zaragoza, a trainer for teachers in bilingual education, educational innovation, and international programs, and coordinator of the Foreign Language Science Fair held annually in Aragon for students in bilingual centers.
With over 15 years of experience in education in Spain and the United States through the Visiting Teachers program, she has developed her professional career as a teacher and coordinator of the MEC-British Council bilingual program in various educational centers in Aragon. She has also developed school twinning projects with the United Kingdom, USA, and Australia.
University of La Laguna
PhD in Educational Sciences, specializing in Bilingual Education (CLIL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Teaching.
Permanent Labor Professor in the Department of Specific Didactics (Didactics of Foreign Language and Literature) at the University of La Laguna (ULL). His research lines are digital literacy and competency-based approach in EFL and CLIL for primary and secondary levels. He has published articles and book chapters in national and international publishers and journals. Over the last ten years, he has participated in numerous international and national conferences. He coordinates the GIEP research group at ULL and has supervised four doctoral theses. He is currently co-PI of two interuniversity educational innovation projects between ULL and ULPGC.
University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
María Esther Rodríguez-Gil, a Lecturer at the Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), teaches English in the Bachelor’s degree in Modern Languages, offered by the Faculty of Philology at ULPGC. With over a decade of bilingual teaching experience, she is a member of the research group VARLING at the Text Analysis and Applications Research Institute (IATEXT).
Her current work in applied linguistics focuses on bilingual education, including research projects on diversity and educational innovation. As an expert in active methodologies and Artificial Intelligence in the classroom, Rodríguez-Gil conducts teacher training courses for educators, emphasizing both general and bilingual education contexts. Currently, María Esther serves as Coordinator of Training Plan for Teachers and Research Staff at ULPGC, after having held leadership roles such as Vice-Director of Academic Organization, New Degrees and Innovation (Online Centre at ULPGC, 2021–2025).
Department of Education of Aragon
National Association for Bilingual Education - NABE
Dr. Margarita Machado-Casas is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar in
bilingual, multicultural, and transnational education. She currently serves as the President of the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) and is a Full Professor in the
Department of Dual Language and English Learner Education at San Diego State University.
Dr. Machado-Casas earned her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
where she received the prestigious IMPACT Award for her groundbreaking research on
transnational migration and the educational experiences of multilingual immigrant and
Indigenous communities in the U.S. South. She later completed a competitive postdoctoral
fellowship at the Frank Porter Graham Research Institute in collaboration with Duke
University.
Her interdisciplinary research centers on immigrant, Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and multilingual communities, exploring issues of agency, identity, literacy, culturally responsive assessment, family engagement, and the sociocultural foundations of education. She has authored more than 80 scholarly works, including over 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and has edited or co-edited more than 15 international books. Among these is the award-winning Handbook of Latinos in Education, which received the Critics’ Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association. She is also co-editor of the best-selling book Evaluating Bilingual Education Programs: Assessing Students’ Bilingualism, Biliteracy, and Sociocultural Competence, a widely adopted resource for educators and policy makers focused on equitable assessment in bilingual classrooms.
Junta de Castilla y León
He holds a degree in English Philology from the University of Valladolid. He taught English for 13 years, served as a secondary English advisor at the CFIE of Valladolid for 4 years, and was director of the Teacher Training Center for Languages of Castilla y León for 8 years. He is the creator of multiple innovation projects, including the OBSERVA_ACCION innovation project based on teacher observation and school twinning as training tools.
Since 2023, he has been the head of the teacher training, innovation, and internationalization service at the Ministry of Education of Castilla y León. He has coordinated or participated in multiple European ERASMUS+ KA1, KA2, and KA3 projects and INTERREG projects since 2010, several of them focused on CLIL methodology. He coordinates teacher training and innovation and internationalization projects in Castilla y León, with a special emphasis on training teachers who teach their subjects in a foreign language in Castilla y León.
University of Texas - El Paso
Currently a Professor of Bilingual Education, immediate past Dean of the College of Education at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), and current Special Advisor to the Vice President for Research, has dedicated her entire professional career to enhancing educational opportunities for Spanish-speaking students in the United States. She is a leading scholar, author and an advocate on issues of equity and excellence for culturally and linguistically diverse children and families. Her rich experience and knowledge about effective educational reform and the roles of culture and language in school achievement have been key vehicles for affecting positive change in school districts across the U.S. and in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Her extensive publication record includes a focus on literacy and biliteracy for Spanish speaking children, school-university partnerships, and school-community collaboration with a focus on linguistically and culturally diverse populations. She has pioneered the development of instructional materials for Spanish speaking students in the U.S. As an author for Macmillan-McGraw-Hill, Mc-Graw Hil, Hampton-Brown and National Geographic Publishing Companies, she has developed instructional materials featuring authentic literature from well-known authors of Spanish children’s literature used by school districts throughout the United States.
COFAPA
D. in Education, Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the Complutense University of Madrid. Assistant Director of Students of the Education and Psychology Degrees at Centro Universitario Villanueva.
Professor in the area of Social Sciences Didactics and Practicum III in the degrees of Early Childhood and Primary Education Professor of the Master’s Degree in Educational Center Management at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.
President of the Confederation of Parents’ Associations COFAPA. Member of the State School Council and the Organization of Ibero-American States, OEI.
Autonomous Federation of Private Education Centers of Madrid - FACEPM
He holds a degree in Economics and Business Administration from Complutense University of Madrid and an International MBA from La Salle International Graduate School.
Since 2010, General Secretary of the Autonomous Federation of Private Education Centers of Madrid.
University of Valladolid
Natalia Barranco Izquierdo holds a PhD in Language and Literature Didactics with a specialization in foreign languages. She is a permanent labor professor at the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Valladolid. Her teaching and research activities focus on teaching English as a foreign language, as well as mediation as a communicative language activity.
Her scientific production focuses on bilingual education, teaching English to students in socio-educational vulnerability, and linguistic mediation. She also participates in European research projects related to foreign language teaching in university settings. She is a member of the interdisciplinary, interinstitutional, and international GIR “Communicative and Intercultural Skills in a Foreign Language”.
University of Valladolid
Francisco Javier Sanz Trigueros holds a PhD from the University of Valladolid, where he works as a Contracted Doctor Professor in the Department of Language and Literature Didactics – Foreign Language Didactics Teaching Unit. He teaches in Education Degrees and in Master’s programs for teacher training and applied education research. He has experience in university management; he currently coordinates the Foreign Languages specialties in the Master’s for teacher training.
His research focuses on the professional development of teachers involved in bi/plurilingual and intercultural education. He disseminates this work at international conferences and in impactful publications in specialized journals, serving as Assistant editor and reviewer for some of them. He has completed stays in Bristol, Portugal, and Switzerland, and is a member of the GIR “Professional Qualifications, Employability, and Social Entrepreneurship,” as well as the International Society of Language and Literature Didactics and the Bilingual Education Association. He recently collaborated on two studies commissioned by the British Council.
University of Valladolid
Álvaro Herrera Sánchez holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education with a specialization in Foreign Language (English) from the University of Valladolid, and a Master’s Degree in Applied Research in Education.
He is currently a full-time doctoral student in the Transdisciplinary Research in Education Doctoral Program at the University of Valladolid, focusing on teacher training. His research examines the suitability factors of school resources and materials in centers with bilingual education programs.
University of Valladolid
Patricia Baños García is an Associate Professor in the Department of Didactics of Experimental, Social, and Mathematical Sciences at the Faculty of Education in Palencia (University of Valladolid). She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education and a Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education, as well as a Master’s Degree in Applied Research in Education. She is currently pursuing her doctoral thesis in the Transdisciplinary Research in Education Doctoral Program at the University of Valladolid.
Throughout her professional career, she has worked as a Secondary Education teacher in Norway, where she taught English, and as a Primary Education teacher specializing in English language and bilingual areas.
Since 2024, she has participated in the competitive Teaching Innovation Project AMI: Inclusive Experimental Model Classroom, which develops educational proposals in the university setting.
British Council
University of Salamanca
Japan CLIL Pedagogy Association (J-CLIL)
Francisco Javier Sanz Trigueros holds a PhD from the University of Valladolid, where he works as a Contracted Doctor Professor in the Department of Language and Literature Didactics – Foreign Language Didactics Teaching Unit. He teaches in Education Degrees and in Master’s programs for teacher training and applied education research. He has experience in university management; he currently coordinates the Foreign Languages specialties in the Master’s for teacher training.
His research focuses on the professional development of teachers involved in bi/plurilingual and intercultural education. He disseminates this work at international conferences and in impactful publications in specialized journals, serving as Assistant editor and reviewer for some of them. He has completed stays in Bristol, Portugal, and Switzerland, and is a member of the GIR “Professional Qualifications, Employability, and Social Entrepreneurship,” as well as the International Society of Language and Literature Didactics and the Bilingual Education Association. He recently collaborated on two studies commissioned by the British Council.
University of Granada
Ministry of Education of Madrid