Invited Speakers

Born in Hendaye, he began to practice Basque improvised sung poetry at a very young age influenced by the atmosphere at his home. After attending Seaska School and Bayonne College, he studied journalism at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/ EHU). He regularly writes for the weekly publication Argia and the daily newspaper Berria, and often collaborates with Euskadi Irratia (a local radio station which broadcasts exclusively in the Basque language). He has participated in numerous events and activities including talks, critical reflections in public and preparation and transmission of messages for public events. He has also taught Basque improvised verse singing at the Bertso Eskola in Hendaye, has won numerous written verse competitions, has written lyrics to many songs and has participated in many projects designed to merge the world of Basque improvised verse singing with other disciplines such as dance, poetry and music, for example. He has won the Bertsolari Championship of Navarre four times, and the Xilaba Bertsulari Xapelketa Competition three times. He came second in the Basque Country’s Bertsolari Championship in 2009 and he is the present champion since 2013.

Pamela Diggle is a Professor and Head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut, USA. Her research focuses on plant development: how evolutionary changes in development produce new forms and how developmental process will affect plant responses to climate change. She has served her field of “Botany” as a Program Director at the US-National Science Foundation, as President of the Botanical Society of America, and is currently the Editorin- Chief of the American Journal of Botany. She is committed to sharing her enthusiasm for plant through undergraduate teaching, summer intensive courses for graduate students, and outreach to elementary students in remote Alaskan villages.

Born on October 2nd in 1961 in Zarautz (Gipuzkoa). He currently lives in his home town, although he did spend a number of years in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of both the province of Alava and the Autonomous Region of the Basque Country. He has a degree in Basque Philology. Nowadays, his is fully dedicated to creation works: not only he is well-known for being a Basque improvised verse singer (a bertsolari as they are known in the Basque language), but also for his writings and his television scripts. He has experimented with various different literary genres and has collaborated and collaborates often with the Basque press, writing opinion articles. He has brought out an album featuring a collection of his own verses and has written songs for other singers too. From the end of the 1980s onwards, and particularly during the 1990s, he has been one of the most respected and recognised names in the world of Basque improvised sung poetry. Andoni Egaña stands out as well for his work as a researcher, scholar and theoretician, and has made seminal contributions to the analysis and dissemination of the creative process involved in Basque improvised poetry. He has participated in numerous experiences seeking to bring together the world of improvised verse singing and other forms of expression such as dance, accordion (or trikiti) playing, poetry and music, etc. He has been a Board member of the Association of Friends of Bertsolaritza for many years and was formerly head of its Research Department. He won the Bertsolari Championship of the Basque Country four times, in 1993, 1997, 2001 and 2005.

Itziar Laka is a Professor at the Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies, and director of the research group The Bilingual Mind. She earned her PhD in 1990 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a thesis entitled Negation in Syntax: On the Nature of Functional Categories and Projections, which was later published by Garland in 1994, and lectured in Linguistics at the University of Rochester (New York) from 1990 to 1995. She has been a guest lecturer at the Universities of Vienna, Utrecht, Naples and Río de Janeiro, and a guest research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities (NIAS) and the Ortega y Gasset University Institute in Madrid, among others. She is a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of the Basque Language and author of A Brief Grammar of Euskara, the Basque Language (1996), which is freely available on the Internet. Her research combines linguistic theory with experimental psycho-neurolinguistic methods for studying the neural representation and computation of language, focused mainly on syntax and bilingualism.

Maialen Lujanbio has a degree in Fine Arts, and her passion, the art of Basque improvised verse singing, is today her profession. She began practising bertsolaritza, as the art is known in the Basque language, at the Bertso Eskola (improvised Basque verse school) and made her debut in the inter- verse schools contests. In 2003 she won the Gipuzkoa Bertsolari Championship, in 2001, 2005 and 2013 came second in the Basque Country’s Bertsolari Championship and became champion in 2009. In addition to Basque improvised verses she has also embarked on a number of other creative projects. From 2006 to 2011 she worked with Judith Montero and Xabier Erkizia to implement a project called Ornitorrinkus, an initiative which merges experimental music, sound and words and which gave rise to the book-album “Ornitorrinkus”. In 2011 she created the radioperformance “Txori Mugariak” with Xabier Erkizia, and in 2013 worked on the project “Hegi, Egia, Egiak”. She regularly collaborates with Euskadi Irratia (a local radio station which broadcasts exclusively in the Basque language) and gives talks in many towns, as well as at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), about the use of Basque in the workplace. She has collaborated with the weekly publication Argia and the daily newspapers Egunkaria and Berria, among others. Maialen Lujanbio lives in close contact with words, and in particular, with the world of bertsolaritza.

Xurxo Mariño has a PhD in Biology from the University of Santiago de Compostela, and currently lectures in the Department of Medicine at the University of A Coruña. He is a member of the Neurocom research group at that same university, has published research papers in a number of specialised journals and has collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He often participates in science dissemination activities, striving to foster greater interaction with the rest of humanities. He is the author of several books, including: “Os dados do reloxeiro”, “Po de estrelas” and “Neurociencia para Julia”; and contributes to the online platform Naukas. He organises “scientific cafétheatre events” and engages in other dissemination activities such as “Discurshows”, a hybrid format which is part talk and part performance. In 2011 he was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the “1st FECYT Competition of Scientific Communication”, and in 2014 won the Tesla Award for Dissemination.

Director and coordinator of activities at Peripeciencia, a production plant of popular scientific knowledge. He is a professional actor and theatre director, with a long career in theatre, film and TV.

Professor in Physiology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). He has researched the physiology of marine animals at different scientific institutions in Europe and has served as both Vice- Rector (1997-2000) and Rector (2004-2009) of the UPV/EHU. He is a member of Jakiunde, the Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, and the FECYT (Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology) Science and Technology Council. He regularly collaborates with different media in science social communication activities, and is currently the Coordinator of the Chair in Scientific Culture at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU).

Kirmen Uribe (Ondarroa, 1970) is one of the most widely-read and commonly-translated Basque-language authors. After studying Basque Philology in Vitoria-Gasteiz (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU) he moved to Trento (Italy) to do a postdoctoral degree in Comparative Literature. His first novel, Bilbao-New York- Bilbao, won the National Prize for Literature in 2009 and became a global phenomenon, translated into 15 different languages. In the United Kingdom, it was included by the bookstore Foyles in its list of the 15 best books of the year. His previous book of poems, Bitartean heldu eskutik (Meanwhile take my hand), garnered much critical and public acclaim (it won the Critics Award in Basque and was published in English in the USA). His latest novel, Mussche (That which moves the world), is the first novel written in Basque to be published in China. Uribe has been invited to speak at many prestigious universities, including Stanford, Chicago, Oxford, UCSD, NYU and Washington University, where next year he will be a Massie Lecturer in literature. His work has been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, El País and Berria.