2008 Keynote Speaker:

Désiré Baloubi, PhD

Dr. Désiré Baloubi is an applied linguist from the Republic of Benin in West Africa, where he was on the teaching staff of Benin Teacher Training Colleges and the Department of English at the National University of Benin from 1986 to 1995.  He was educated at the University of Ghana--Legon, the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Porto-Novo in Benin, the University of Durham in England, and Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.  He is currently an Associate Professor of English and Linguistics at Shaw University in North Carolina.

Dr. Baloubi's major interests are 1)  English: Composition & Rhetoric, Present-Day English Language Usage, and Culture; 2) Linguistics: Phonology, Morphology, Language and Culture, Language and Gender, Discourse Analysis, Cross-cultural Pragmatics, Second Language Acquisition, and African Linguistics with emphasis on Yoruba dialectology and particular attention to the IDAACHA dialect of Yoruba.  Other  interests include Spanish (Language & Culture), French (Language & Culture) Political Science, Human Communication or Speech Communication/Public Speaking, and TESOL with  concentration on multicultural issues.