Maisa Zakir (Ph.D. candidate)
Maisa is a Ph.D. candidate in Language Studies from UNESP - Universidade Estadual Paulista, São José do Rio Preto campus. She completed her Master of Education (Pedagogical Approaches to Language Teaching) at UNESP - Marilia (2008) and graduated in Language Studies (Letras) from UNESP - Assis (2003), with degrees in English, Portuguese and Italian. Maisa has served as junior and high school teacher in the Public State Network and as a Portuguese Language Coordinator for the in Board of Education of Marilia (State of São Paulo). She was a Fulbright Lecturer of Portuguese language at the University of Miami, Florida, USA, from August 2009 to May 2010. She has experience in teaching Portuguese and English. In her Master thesis, she studied Portuguese Language teachers' representations of their teaching practice. In her doctoral research, Maisa studies the representations of culture in the discourse of American and Brazilian students during teletandem synchronous interactions when learning foreign languages via webcam.
Ludmila Belotti Andreu Funo (Ph.D. candidate)
Ludmila is a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate Program in Language Studies of UNESP - São José do Rio Preto. She hols a MA degree in Applied Linguistics and a Graduate Degree in Language Arts from the same institution (2002). In Master thesis, she studied Spanish teachers' social representations of their teaching practice with teletandem and ICT. Her doctoral research is about the representations of identity and culture in the discourse of Brazilian students and mediators of interactions during teletandem sessions. Ludmila has experience as a textbook proofreader, as a Junior High School teacher (English, Portuguese and Reading), as a Pedagogical Coordinator for the State Board of Education, and as a teacher of Portuguese (as first and second language) and TEFL.
Micheli Gomes de Souza (Ph.D. candidate)
Micheli has a BA degree in Language Arts (Portuguese and EFL) from UNESP-Assis. She also holds a Master degree in Language Studies from UNESP - Universidade Estadual Paulista, São José do Rio Preto campus, when she studied foreign language teachers' first contact with online teletandem practices. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the same institution and her thesis topic relates to the misunderstandings and their implications for the development of the interaction during teletandem sessions in Portuguese and English. Currently, she is a Fulbright lecturer of Portuguese as a Foreign Language at the University of Iowa, USA.
Anna K. Elstermann (Ph.D. candidate)
Anna holds an MA in Translation, Applied Linguistics and Cultural Studies - Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (2008) - Diplomübersetzerin. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany, and a lecturer of German in the Department of Modern Languages at the University Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho, FCL, Campus de Assis. She has experience in Translation and in the Teaching of Foreign Languages, focusing mainly on the following themes: teletandem, mediation, German, and Portuguese as foreign languages.