Keynote Speakers

This year's Keynote Speakers are:
- Dr. Martha Beatriz Dijkhoff
- Professor Ian Robertson
- Dr. Clive Forrester

Marta Beatriz Dijkhoff

Marta Dijkhoff aims to help organizations who want to alter their human capability or organizational systems to achieve a higher degree of output or self-actualization. The result is to enable people to do more, or to find a new and better perspective on learning. Sometimes this latter idea is the foundation for future change which achieves outcomes that were previously not attainable. From being a language and education planner, researcher, and teacher in the 1980s, she became, in the 1990s, Minister of Education for the Netherlands Antilles. She introduced most of the educational policy that is now being implemented in the face of much opposition. At present she works as a consultant on different projects at the crossroad of language learning and innovation. Marta received a master’s degree in Spanish Language & Literature, and General Linguistics (cum laude) in 1983, with minors in Creole languages, Phonetics and Portuguese, at the Universities of Groningen and Leiden. In 1993 she obtained her Ph. D in Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. She worked as a researcher and language planning professional at the Ministry of Education between 1983 and 1993 (as a deputy director of the National Linguistic Institute) and developed teaching material for Papiamentu at the teacher training college. In 1999 she obtained a MSc degree in Educational & Training Systems Design, at the University of Twente, and has worked as a consultant at Kessels & Smit, the Learning Company in the Netherlands between 1999 and 2001. Between 2002 and 2022 she worked as the Director of Dijkhoff Learning Unlimited advising management of learning institutions in complex change processes, coached learning teams for improved work performance and designed learning and training programs. Her specialty is the triangle of policy, planning, training and (language) innovation. At present she is the director of the National Language Institute of Curacao.

Prof. Ian Robertson is a Professor Emeritus of The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago, linguist, language educator and former SCL President. Prof Robertson will deliver a plenary entitled, "Linguistics from the Ground Up: An Evaluation of the Role and Critical Advantage of Field Experience in the Approach to Language Study in Caribbean Creolophone Societies."

Dr. Clive Forrester will deliver the biennial presidential plenary. Dr. Forrester is a faculty member in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo where he teaches courses on academic writing, technical writing, linguistics, and Caribbean language and culture. Dr. Forrester will deliver a plenary entitled, “Reflections on Caribbean Language Advocacy through three Stories”.