Empowerment through Language and Education

Biographical notes

Albert Weideman (Volume editor) Birgit Smieja (Volume editor)

The Editors: Albert Weideman is director of the Unit for Academic Literacy of the University of Pretoria, and formerly Director of Professional Programmes in the Faculty of Education at the University of the Western Cape. He was director of the teacher development agency Language Methods and Programmes (L-MAP), and director of the Centre for Education Development (CENEDUS) at the University of Stellenbosch. Before that, he taught Latin and English at the University of the Orange Free State. His main interests are alternative and innovative second language teaching methodologies, and he has published more than 30 scholarly articles on this. He serves on the editorial boards of a number of accredited journals. Birgit Smieja lectures at the Landau Campus of the University of Koblenz-Landau, where she teaches applied linguistics as well as practical language courses, cultural studies, and educational theory for primary school teachers. Her study on language attitudes and language use in Botswana, published by Peter Lang in 2003, has placed her at the cutting edge of our academic consciousness of the interface between language and education. She has spoken to international academic audiences in Belgium, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Tanzania, and has published in scholarly journals on a variety of topics. She has edited three volumes of studies that focus on African languages. She was formerly a research co-ordinator of the LiCCA project (Languages in Contact and Conflict in Africa) and involved in several field studies in Tanzania and Botswana involving various universities and schools.