Speakers

Ildikó Lázár is a lecturer and teacher educator at the Department of English Language Pedagogy of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary, offering courses in language teaching methodology and intercultural communication for pre- and in-service English teachers. She obtained an MA degree in English and French Language and Literature and a PhD in Language Pedagogy. She wrote her doctoral thesis on the role and status of intercultural communication training in teacher education in Hungary. For the last ten years she has also been coordinating international research and training projects for the Council of Europe at the ECML in Graz and in the Pestalozzi Programme in Strasbourg. She has published articles and co-authored and edited books on the methodology of developing and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Her interests also include planning and running professional development courses for teachers to use ICT tools for intercultural web collaboration projects and to benefit from linguistic and socio-cultural diversity in the classroom.

Prof. Zoltán Z. Nagy serves as the Dean of Semmelweis University Faculty of Health Sciences where he directs the Department of Clinical Ophthalmology, too. He has been working in the field of ophthalmology since 1986 and has been practicing refractive surgery in Hungary since 1992. He is an active member of international professional organisations, contributes to various ophthalmic journals and he won numerous awards for his pioneering achievements in ophthalmology and femtolaser-assisted cataract surgery. Prof. Nagy, in the hope of finding perspectives for improving the European health and social care system and education, gladly joined COHEHRE in 2014 as an active contributor to the Conference of 2015.

Blair Stevenson (PhD) is a lecturer and strategic adviser at the School of Vocational Teacher Education at the Oulu University of Applied Sciences (OUAS) in Finland. His current role includes work as a teacher trainer for topics such as educational psychology, global education and pedagogical use of technology. He also works as the Lab Master for the Edu Lab Oulu: a university-level training program focusing on educational product design. His research work and publications focus on multidisciplinary approaches to the interface between teaching, culture and technology. Since 2005, Blair has also been Managing Director of an international education consulting firm based in Canada focusing on topics such as program evaluation and medical education.

Annemie Van den Dries – MA Applied Economics and Consular Sciences. Since 1987 involved in many European educational projects as initiator, coordinator, partner and nowadays as assessor and coach. Was Head of the Internationaal Office of VIVES ( formerly KATHO University College South-West-Flanders, Kortrijk, BE) for many years and was on the Advisory Board for Internationalisation of VLHORA Council of Flemish University Colleges and of the Association of KULeuven. Travelled extensively and had teaching experiences in the EU countries as well as in RU, TR, SG, USA, IN, CN, KG, UZ. Workshop leader of “How to write an EU educational project” for COHEHRE and SPACE.

Dr. Balázs Péter is the vice director of the Public Health Institute at the Semmelweis University Budapest in Hungary. The Institute belongs to the Faculty of Medicine but has commitments also in the dental and pharmaceutical trainings. The author started his career as a general surgeon in 1970 and has been working for 23 years in this specialization. Thus he gained considerable knowledge about the day-to-day practice of out- and in-patient care. He started to research health care systems since the mid 1980’s but changed for academic career only since 1994. Professionalism and medical business was the topic of his PhD theses. In 2006-2007 he headed a research team set up by the Hungarian Ministry of Health that reported to the WHO European Regional Bureau: Evidence generated about equity in access to health care and developing policy options for reducing inequalities. Main actual research areas: human resources of health care especially workforce migration, historic roots and present state of medical professionalism, history of public health administration and of health care business, social health insurance, health policy and system research.