Microsoft Word - Coolabah 1Contributers.doc Coolabah, Vol.1, 2007, pp.85-87 ISSN 1988-5946 Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians, Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS EDITION David Calderón Prada was born in Barcelona in 1984. He loves travelling as a way to discover new cultures, and that is why he does it as often as he can. This is precisely what may have pushed him to study English Literature and Language. His passion for English language and Anglo culture, in general, started after taking an English course in Clonmel, Ireland, in 2001. The next year he started studying English Literature and Language at the Universitat de Barcelona. There he took Introducció a les Cultures Postcolonials de Parla Anglesa (taught by Dr. Susan Ballyn) and, from that moment on, Australian cultures and literature interested him greatly. David coursed his third year undergraduate degree at Goldsmiths College, University of London, based in South-East London. There he made some Australian friends, which was his first contact with Australian reality. Finally, in July 2006 David moved to Melbourne, Australia, to study at La Trobe University (Bundoora), where he completed his bachelor degree Victòria Gras was born in Barcelona (Spain). She studied English Literature and Language at the Universitat de Barcelona followed by a post-graduate program offered by the department of Linguistics at the same University. Victòria taught English as a second language at various schools while studying, and around the same period, she started learning Catalan Sign Language, which very soon became, together with sociolinguistics, her passion. Victòria became a Catalan Sign Language interpreter, later on, a Spanish Sign Language interpreter and worked full-time for Deaf organizations for five years, both as an interpreter and as a linguist mainly producing teaching materials. She concluded her PhD in September 2006: a sociolinguistic description of the Deaf signing population in Spain. She moved to Melbourne in 2003, where she works as a Catalan 86 lecturer and Spanish tutor at La Trobe University. Her main research interests are Deaf communities, language planning, bilingualism, and language endangerment. Lena Lund was born in Finland in 1978. At the age of 16 she spent a year as an exchange student in Barcelona (Spain) after which she went back to Finland to complete her secondary schooling. She then returned to Spain where she combined work with her studies in French and English Literature and Language at the Universitat de Barcelona. In 2004, the Universitat de Barcelona gave her a scholarship to spend the last semester of her undergraduate degree as an exchange student at Southern Cross University (Lismore, NSW). After completing her degree in November 2005, she travelled in Australia and met her husband. She now lives and works as a translator in Melbourne. Mila Martínez was born in Madrid (Spain). She studied Public Relations and worked for an international transport company for three years. Then she travelled to the USA to do a one-year course in English at Harvard University Extension, Boston. Back in Spain, she moved to Barcelona, studied Catalan and took some courses in translation at the Universitat de Barcelona. Mila also studied to become a teacher of Spanish as a foreign language at International the House (Barcelona). She worked both as a Spanish teacher and as a translator for a number of years. In September 2000, she started a bachelor degree in English Literature and Language at the Universitat de Barcelona. In 2005, she was granted a scholarship to work as a professor’s assistant at the English and German Department of the Faculty, as well as a scholarship to study at La Trobe University (Melbourne) as an exchange student. She graduated at the end of 2005. Mila then moved to Ireland to do a Dip/M.A in Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University (DCU). Catalina Ribas Segura was born in Palma de Mallorca (Balearic Islands, Spain) in 1980. In 1998 she moved to Barcelona to take a degree in English Literature 87 and Language at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB). Whilst working towards her degree, the Universitat de Barcelona gave her a scholarship to spend a semester at La Trobe University (Melbourne) as an exchange student. After graduating, she decided to embark on a PhD program “The Construction and Representation of Identities” and in 2005 Caty enjoyed another scholarship from the Universitat de Barcelona to spend a semester at Southern Cross University (Lismore, NSW) as an exchange student. During a third trip to Australia, in 2006, she did research for her thesis, titled “Hieu Thao: Duty and Obedience in Chinese-Australian and Greek-Australian Literature”. Caty moved back to Mallorca in December 2006 and she is writing her thesis, working as a teacher of English at the tertiary institution C.E.S. Alberta Giménez and as a proof-reader and editor for a company in Barcelona. Born in Castellón de la Plana (Valencia, Spain), Ruth Sancho writes since the age of three. In addition to her poetry, she wrote for theatre and film whilst studying at the Col·legi del Teatre in Barcelona for two years and in the Laboratorio de Teatro William Layton in Madrid for another three. In 1994 she won an award for the play Entre vía y vi-a and in 2004 moved to New York where she directed In Praise of Folly (a theatrical version of Don Quixote) and began to write poems in English. In 2005 Ruth arrived in Australia to participate in the Melbourne Writers Festival and in the Overload Poetry Festival, also in Melbourne. It was here where she wrote and performed her poetry for almost two years (Arts Centre, Heidi Modern Museum of Art, etc.). During this time, she received a scholarship from the Universitat de Barcelona to study at La Trobe University. At the moment, she is focused on finishing her first poetry book “The Shadows of the Words” and completeing her bachelor degree in English Literature and Language at the Universitat de Barcelona. 88 Carles Conrad Serra Pagès was born in 1976, in Figueres (Catalonia, Spain). After getting his degree in English Literature and Language, he attended a Master on Modernity and Representation at North-London University. In the year 2000, he was offered a lectureship at Atlanta International School (USA), where he taught Spanish and English at high school level in Salt Lake City and New York, respectively. After that, he decided to go back to Spain and commence a PhD in Humanities at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, while he also enrolled in the bachelor degree of Philosophy at the Universitat de Barcelona. In 2005, the Universitat de Barcelona offered him a grant to study at LaTrobe University for one semester. Currently, he holds a part-time position as English teacher for the city council of Barcelona and has defended his minor thesis “The concept of transcendental space in the work of Derrida”. Elena Xampeny i Solaní was born in Barcelona in 1969. During her childhood she studied music and piano at the Municipal Conservatory of Music in Barcelona. Whilst at university, she took two degrees simultaneously. She graduated from the Teacher Training College and got a Bachelor degree in English Literature and Language at the Universitat de Barcelona. She has been a primary school teacher in a state school until 1991. She got two scholarships from the Universitat de Barcelona as an exchange student to La Trobe University (Melbourne), in the years 2000 and 2001, which contributed to her acquisition of a deeper knowledge of the Australian culture and society. Currently, she teaches adults in a public school in Terrassa. She has become a defender of sustainable mobility and an active member of a NGO which supports the use of public transport, especially the bicycle, as a means to avoid climate change. 89 Anna Zamora graduated from the Universitat de Barcelona (B. A. in Sociology) in June 2006, and she is currently pursuing a PhD in Sociology at Columbia University, New York. She was at La Trobe University for the academic year 2003-2004 as an exchange student from the Universitat de Barcelona, and throughout that time she worked as a Research Assistant for the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights, at Deakin University, also in Melbourne. Her article with Michael P. Leach, “Ilegals/ Ilegales: Comparing anti-immigrant/ anti-refugee discourses in Australia and Spain” was published in the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, vol. 12 (1), 2006, 51-64.