Keynote Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Prof. Dr. Kobus Maree
University of Pretoria, South Africa

Keynote Title: “Career counseling/guidance/ education.”

Abstract: “Will be announced.”

Bio: Prof. Kobus Maree (DEd (Career Counselling); PhD (Learning Facilitation in Mathematics); Dphil (Psychology)) is a full Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Pretoria. Kobus is a member of the following core scientific committees: a. UNESCO Chair on Lifelong Guidance and Counseling, and b. the UNESCO University Network and Twinning (UNITWIN) Chair. In addition, he was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) Division 16) in 2018. Moreover, he accepted appointments as a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State and as Professor Extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Southern Queensland. Kobus has received multiple awards for his research. In 2014, he received the Psychological Society of South Africa’s Award for Excellence in Science. He was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal for Teaching and Learning from the University of Pretoria in 2010 and has been nominated successfully as an Exceptional Academic Achiever on four consecutive occasions. He has a B1 rating from the National Research Foundation. Kobus has authored or co­authored 90+ peer­reviewed articles and 75 books/ book chapters since 2010. In the same period, he supervised 38 doctoral theses and Master’s dissertations and read keynote papers at 25+ international conferences, and at 22+ national conferences. He has also presented invited workshops at conferences in 40+ countries on a) integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches in career counselling and b) the art and science of writing scholarly articles. Over the past seven years, he has spent a lot of time abroad as a visiting professor at various universities. He was awarded a fellowship of the IAAP in 2014 and received the Psychological Society of South Africa’s Fellow Award in 2017


Jesus GARCIA LABORDA | Dean of the College of Education | PhD, EdD, MA,  MA.Ed | University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares | UAH | Department of  Modern Philology | Research profile

Prof. Dr. Jesus Garcia Laborda 
Alcala University

Keynote Title: “AI in education: A curse or a blessing? “

Abstract: Artificial intelligence came to stay especially in the last two years. The impact of ChatGPT, Slidego and other free AI webs have often been associated to negative ethical connotations, more specifically to cheating in long traditional papers. This presentation addresses the ways to avoid those ethical issues in assessment but looks more in detail at the ways to benefit from AI in developing ideas and writing papers. The paper concludes that fears are due to novelty and that in academic matters, it is important to adapt our assessments to more competence-based tasks.