Robert O'Dowd

Dr Robert O'Dowd is Associate Professor (professor titular) for English as a Foreign Language and Applied Linguistics at the University of León, Spain. He is particularly interested in Online Intercultural Exchange and exploring how online communication can be exploited by universities to support and enhance student learning. He has taught at universities in Ireland, Germany and Spain and has over 40 publications on the application of Virtual Exchange in university and pre-university education settings. He was the founding president of the UNICollaboration academic organisation for telecollaboration and virtual exchange and has been invited to be plenary speaker at international conferences in the US, Asia and across Europe.

In 2019, he was co-editor of a special edition of the prestigious journal Language Learning & Technology on Virtual Exchange in Foreign Language Education. He also coordinated the European Commission’s Erasmus+ KA3 project Evaluating and Upscaling Telecollaborative Teacher Education (EVALUATE), a European Policy Experimentation which studied the impact of Virtual Exchange on over 1000 student teachers involved in Initial Teacher Education across Europe.

Within the EAIE, Robert has served on the Language and Culture Expert Community Steering group for a number of years and has greatly enjoyed promoting language and intercultural learning activities within the Association.