In a world where teaching and learning cross borders and languages, Macquarie University’s English Medium Instruction (EMI) Centre is steering the conversation on how collaboration can transform higher education.
On 23 October 2025 (online via Zoom, 3-6pm AEDT), the Centre is hosting its Global EMI Symposium 2025 with the theme Collaborations in EMI, bringing together educators, researchers and practitioners from around the globe to exchange ideas and innovations.
This three-hour event is free and invites participants to dive deep into collaborative models in EMI settings — from cross-institutional partnerships and multilingual teaching teams to leveraging artificial intelligence tools in content delivery.
Experts, Panels & Lightning Talks
Among the speakers and panellists are:
- Associate Professor Pamela Humphreys, Director of the EMI Centre at Macquarie, as host
- Associate Professor Joyce Kling (Lund University, Sweden), plenary speaker on Targeted CLIL Support for EMI
- A panel featuring voices from Macquarie University, the University of the South Pacific (Fiji), Maynooth University (Ireland), and more
In the short, focused lightning talks, presenters will showcase concrete examples of collaboration in EMI and CLIL settings, including:
- It Takes Two to Tango: Integrating Content and Language Expertise in an ESP Course — Associate Professor Mei-Lan Lo (NTNU, Taiwan)
- Language Specialists and Medicine Domain Experts’ Collaboration — Dr Cameron Lydster (Bond University, Australia)
- CLIL in an EMI Setting — Michael Setiawan (Binus University, Indonesia)
- Road to Success in the Northern Territory — Hannah Madin (Dept of Education, NT, Australia)
- Collaborative EMI Promotion in Japanese Higher Education — Tomomi Ota (Hokkaido University of Education, Japan)
- EMI Teachers’ Attitudes and Beliefs about GenAI — Luis Torres-Vazques & Daniel Escibens (Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Peru)
- Leveraging Cross-Institution Collaboration and GenAI for EMI Education in Statistics — Professor JinHuei Yeh and Professor ShanYing Chu (NCU, Taiwan)
These talks provide snapshots of how collaboration works on the ground, across disciplines, countries and technologies.
Why This Matters
English Medium Instruction (EMI) — that is, using English as the language of teaching in contexts where English is not the first language — is growing exponentially in schools and universities worldwide. Intended to bring the double positive of content and English language acquisition, it can lead to a double negative if enacted poorly. Challenges include the language levels of students, a lack of investment in the capacity-building of educators, and aligning content experts with language educators, among others. This Symposium’s focus on collaboration aims to address some of these hurdles head on.
Macquarie’s EMI Centre was the region’s first devoted to supporting the practice of EMI. It offers programs, consultancy, microcredentials, MOOCs, and more — with the mission to support providers that use (or are transitioning to) English as the language of instruction.
Through events like this symposium, the Centre positions itself not just as a local resource, but a global hub for professional development, collaborative innovation, and research in EMI.
The symposium is online and free, making it accessible to educators and students across Australia and beyond. For more information and to register, see here.
