Professor Goran Šimić, PhD: The importance of reading for the development of emotional competencies

Goran Šimić is a professor of Neuroscience and the Head of the Department od Neuroscience of the Croatian Institute for Brain Research of the Zagreb School of Medicine, University of Zagreb. He is the Head of the Developmental Neuropathology Laboratory, which studies the mechanisms of development of neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases. Professor Goran Šimić is the recipient of numerous domestic and foreign awards for his work, such as the Award of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Ars for Medicine (2009), State award for the popularization of science (2010) and Annual award in the field of biomedicine and health (2015). Professor Goran Šimić is also the recipient of the “Kurt Jellinger Prize”, the Award of the Acta Neuropathologica Magazine, one of the world leading magazines which specializes in Neuropathology, which also proclaimed professor Šimić to be the best neuropathologist in 2008. Lately, professor Goran Šimić has given a number of lectures and participated in a series of round tables where he spoke about the influence overexposure of young people and children to digital technologies has on their cognitive and emotional development. For more information, please follow the link. 

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Prof. dr. sc. Renee Hobbs: Improving reading comprehension by using media literacy activities

Professor Hobbs is an internationally-recognized authority on digital and media literacy education. Through community and global service and as a researcher, teacher, advocate and media professional, Hobbs has worked to advance the quality of digital and media literacy education in the United States and around the world. She is Founder and Director of the Media Education Lab, whose mission is to improve the quality of media literacy education through research and community service.
Renee Hobbs is Professor of Communication Studies at the  Harrington School of Communication and Media at the University of Rhode Island. She is the founding co-editor of the Journal for Media Literacy Education, an open-access peer reviewed journal that advances scholarship in the field. With her colleague Julie Coiro, co-directs the URI Graduate Certificate in Digital Literacy, a 12-credit graduate program for K-12 and college faculty, librarians and media professionals. The program’s signature professional development program is the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy, now in its 9th year. From 2012 – 2014, as the school’s Founding Director, she helped develop a distinctive identity for the new school and increased visibility for departments and programs in Journalism, Film/Media, Communication Studies, Public Relations, Writing & Rhetoric and a graduate program in Library and Information Studies. During that time, she also served as Interim Director of the URI Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, leading that program through a major curriculum renewal process and helping it retain accreditation by the American Library Association.
Renee Hobbs maintains an active research agenda that examines the intersections of the fields of media studies and education. She has published over 150 articles in scholarly and professional journals and in 2018, she was recognized for research productivity by receiving the Research Excellence Award from the University of Rhode Island.

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Prof. dr. sc. Karol Visinko: Application of Reading Strategies in Croatian Language and Literature Teaching and Learning

Professor Karol Visinko is a full professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Croatian Language and Literature, University of Rijeka.
The focus of her scientific and professional activity is on teacher training in teaching methods in language and literature classes for children and youth as well as on reception and interpretation of Croatian and world literature for children and youth. She has participated in a number of scientific and research projects, such as Reception of the Croatian Children’s Story. Her works have been translated into Italian, English and Slovenian.

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Prof. dr. sc. Anita Peti-Stantić: The Power of Concentric Circles of Reading Abilities: Deep Reading of Popular Science

Over the last five years, Anita Peti-Stantić has been researching the relation between the grammatical and the lexical language structure and various theoretical linguistic, psycholinguistic and experimental views. Her two-year stay at the Center for Cognitive Studies of Tufts University in the United States (2013-2015) has contributed to this significantly. In cooperation with Ray Jackendoff, she had the opportunity to take part in weekly scientific seminars both at the University itself (seminar research groups of R. Jackendoff, D. Dennett, G. Kuperberg and M. Wolf), and at Harvard University (participated in J. Snedeker’s and M. Polinsky’s seminars) and the MIT (N. Chomsky’s seminars). For two years, she cooperated intensely with Ray Jackendoff on a project related to the hierarchy of grammatical structures, where she focused on persons suffering from aphasia and the phonologic-semantic and syntactic-semantic interface in the information structure of the sentence.

More information at this link.

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P. Andrzej S. Wodka: The Bible and reading rituals. Why read what’s already been read?

Andrzej S. Wodka is a Redemptorist, Dean of the Alphonsian Academy, new President of the Holy See’s Agency for the Evaluation and Promotion of Quality in Ecclesiastical Universities and Faculties (AVEPRO). As a brother of the Order of St Alphonsus M. Liguori he was ordained priest in 1985. He obtained a doctoral degree in Biblical Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University. Since 2013, he has been the Dean of the Alphonsian Academy, a higher education institute for moral theology in Rome.

 

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