The special guests of the Second Edition of the International Conference on Logopedics: Fluency Disorders: Theory and Practice:
Directly after taking holy orders in 1954 Władysław Basista assisted priest Stanisław Wilczewski in the Phonetic Institute in conducting classes of pastoral phonetics for seminarists. Having a specialist speech-therapy education, he placed particular emphasis on the issues devoted to living word culture. Preparing future priests to perform the pastoral service of conveying the Word of God, he presented the local Church’s concern for the formal aspects of preaching included
in the resolutions of the First Synod of the Katowice Diocese. Making use of his speech-therapy competence and great experience, he professionally commented on contemporary language problems in preaching and preparing lectors to read the Word of God, which became his scientific interest resulting in publishing a book and an article. During Władysław Basista’s teaching work in the years 1960-2001, 1258 priests graduated from the Silesian Seminary, including the graduates of the Higher Franciscan Seminary in Panewniki where he also was a lecturer of homiletics and pastoral phonetics.
Zdzisław Gładosz co-created a self-help group for People Who Stutter (PWS) at The Family Prevention and Psychotherapy Clinic in Lublin in 1992. He was a member of the Polish Stuttering Association since 2002, and in 2003 he became the president of the National Stuttering Association OSTOJA in Lublin. Currently, he is an organizer of self-help groups for PWS, self-help groups for parents of children who stutter; he is also a co-organizer of summer therapy camps which provide stuttering therapy for different age groups of clients; he is a co-organizer of the Polish National Stuttering Association Conventions.
Jane Harley (nee Fry) is a Clinical Lead at the Michael Palin Centre, working with children, young people and adults who stutter. She has a Post-grad Diploma in Cognitive Therapy from the Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre and an MSc in Psychological Counselling. She has training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and an interest in the use of Mindfulness Meditation techniques with people who stammer. She has co-authored a number of clinical and research publications. Her research interests include the effectiveness of therapy with young people who stutter. Jane runs workshops both within the UK and internationally as part of the Michael Palin Centre teaching programme. She is a visiting lecturer at UCL.
Dr. Hana Laciková was working at the Department of Speech Therapy at the Comenius University in Bratislava (Slovakia) in years 1999–2001, where she focused on treatment of stuttering. Since 2000 she has been actively involved in development and verification of the speech therapy methodology. She is also publishing scientific articles and conducting workshops in Slovakia and in the Czech Republic. She has been holding the position of the director of the Child Speech Therapy Institute and working as a specialist in fluency disorders since 2007. She cooperates with the Comenius University where she lectures and coordinates students’ training in the area of fluency disorders.
Dr. Florence Myers has been Professor at Adelphi University (New York) since 1978. Her areas of interest include stuttering and cluttering; as well as the interrelationship of language functions, prosody and fluency. She is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, recipient of the Deso Weiss Award for Excellence in Cluttering (sponsored by the International Cluttering Association and the Stuttering Foundation of America). She was a Fulbright Senior Specialist to Hong Kong University with specialty in fluency disorders. She has authored or co-authored books and book chapters on stuttering and cluttering, and published in various peer-reviewed journals. Her invited presentations have spanned the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia.
Karel Neubauer PhD, is a professor in Speech Pathology at the University of Hradec Králové, at the Department of Special Education and Logopedics. He is also a coordinator of the Experts Committee of the Association of Clinical Logopedics of the Czech Republic (AKL ČR) and a permanent member of the Eligibility Committee of Clinical Logopedics Institute of Medical Education in Prague (Praha IPVZ). For more than twenty-five years he has been working as a speech-language therapist with children and adults. He has been conducting the Speech Clinic in Česká Lípa for fifteen years. In 1999 he completed a four-year program of integrative psychotherapy under the guidance of prof. Stanislav Kratochvíl. He is a specialist in using a non-directive supportive psychotherapy and cognitive-behavioral approaches in the complex therapy for patients with fluency disorders and neurogenic communication disorders.
Benny Ravid is founder of AMBI – Israel Stuttering Association and was AMBI chair between the years 1999–2015. In the years 2007–2010 Benny served also as chair of ISA – International Stuttering Association. Currently Benny Ravid is the Honorary President of AMBI and leads projects like AMBI Empowering group, AMBI Speech group and more.
Dr. Isabella Reichel is an Associate Professor at the Graduate Program in Speech and Language Pathology at Touro College, New York. Dr. Reichel is a Board Certified Specialist in Fluency Disorders and a member of the Initial Cadre of fluency specialists. She has specialized in the treatment of stuttering and cluttering for over three decades. She is the chair of the Committee of the International Representatives of the International Cluttering Association. In this capacity, Dr. Reichel conducts international surveys, leads multinational collaborative initiatives in research, and leads seminars at international congresses and conferences. She chairs the Deso Weiss Awards Committee of the Stuttering Foundation of America and the ICA. Her articles and chapters on the topics of stuttering, cluttering, emotional intelligence, and stigma regarding people with fluency disorders have been published and presented nationally and internationally. She co-authored with Dr. Yvonne van Zaalen a book entitled Cluttering: Current Views on Its Nature, Assessment and Treatment.
Dr. Krzysztof Szamburski is a psychologist and a speech-language therapist (SLT), as well as a sensory integration therapist and a senior lecturer at the post-MA Speech Pathology Studies at the University of Warsaw. He works as an SLT in the Specialist Psychological and Pedagogical Counselling Centre “TOP” in Warsaw, he has been the head of since September 2011.
He is interested in psychological conditioning in speech-language disorders as well as in speech and language delay, in both oral and written forms. His work combines theoretical and practical dimensions: he conducts research and works as a lecturer and an SLT. His main area of interest is stuttering. He established psychological and neuropsychological model of the origins of stuttering. He uses his original method of fluency acquisition based on syllable tapping while maintaining prosodic features of speech, learning to postpone and slow down.
Dr. Martine Vanryckeghem is a Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Central Florida. She received her Master’s Degree and Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University, having worked for many years as a speech therapist at a clinical center in Belgium. Dr. Vanryckeghem is a Board Certified Fluency Specialist and ASHA Fellow, she has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and has given workshops, internationally, on the evaluation of fluency disorders in children and adults. From 1990 until 2000, she was the Managing Editor of the Journal of Fluency Disorders and is consultant to a number of professional journals. She is a member of the Scientific Board of SIG in Belgium, and serves internationally as a consultant to the faculty and students of various hospital and university-based programs.