Keynote speakers

Dr Zhang’s research area includes institutional change and institutional logics; Educational leadership; Internationalization in Higher Education, especially the Sino-foreign Cooperative universities; Future education in the AI era; Syntegrative Education; University transformation and teaching innovation, in particular research-led learning and teaching; student-centred education; student transition etc.

Xiaojun has published more than 100 academic papers and 5 books. His research focus on problems in practice and pay attention to practical implications. Most of his research has been adopted in his training programmes for higher education practitioners. One of his most recent books titled “University Transformation: From Teacher Dominated to Student-Centred” is a guidebook for education practitioners who want to transform their education. Xiaojun proposed the “diamond model” of teaching innovation in AI era and highlighted ten key directions of teaching innovation in his another recently published book “Future-oriented Teaching Innovation”.

Dr Zhang is a Principal Fellow of Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) in UK. Xiaojun is Chief Officer of Education at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and Team Leader of Entrepreneur College (Taicang) Collective Leadership Team. He also takes roles including inaugural Executive Dean of the Academy of Future Education, and Acting Dean of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Hub.

Professor Dr Rachel Sheffield has reviewed multiple awards that recognise her expertise in education. She was commissioned by UNESCO,  where she worked under the Director of UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, focusing on global citizenship education (GCED) in the Asia-Pacific region. She led the Curtin Academy International Interdisciplinary Industry Study Program, overseeing projects totalling $792,000, and created the Curtin Extra program to foster leadership development.  She serves as a Senior Assessor for the Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT), where she evaluates higher education teaching excellence. Additionally, she was an assessor for the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) iSOLT grants and a reviewer of the international ERFP 28th Grant at the National Institute of Education Singapore. In partnership with industry, she explored a new platform to track school students’ STEM skill acquisition and was an invited Plenary Speaker at EdTech 2023 She developed a Curtin Micro Credentials platform, focusing on design thinking and the UN SDGs. Rachel holds a Principal Fellowship with the Higher Education Academy (PHEA) and she is currently the outgoing chair of the Curtin Academy.

Professor Anthony J. Langlois is the Stan Perron Dean of Applied Ethics in the Faculty of Business & Law at Curtin University. He is the founding director of the new Curtin Centre for Applied Ethics. Langlois is a distinguished specialist on Human Rights and International Ethics, with over 25 years of experience as an educator, author and public speaker. He has an international reputation for his human rights scholarship, published by presses such as Cambridge and Oxford, and in leading academic journals. Among other responsibilities, he is on the editorial board of The Journal of Human Rights and the European Journal of Politics and Gender and is a commissioning editor for Australian Outlook (Australian Institute of International Affairs). He was educated at the University of Tasmania and the Australian National University.