I (Mats Olsson, MO) hope you enjoy to meet Anna Vallbona Gonzales (AV). She’s av very experienced ETEN member. Since 2023 she is an important part of the board and has a special responsibility for the TIGs together with Michel Hogenes.

Link to all portraits.

MO: Where do you come from, and what were your first international experiences?

AV: I was born and raised in Manlleu, a small village 10 km away from Vic. I am the youngest of four siblings. My father worked as an accountant in the offices of an electricity company and my mother worked in the offices of a textile company. As society in my mother’s time (after the Civil War) did not allow my mother to go to university, she was determined to ensure that her children were able to continue their studies after the compulsory school years.

I studied in this town until I was 18: at the primary level in a local catholic primary school for girls and then at the secondary level in the town hall as there was no secondary school at that time in Manlleu. When I was eighteen, I moved to Barcelona to study classical languages first and then English Philology at the Central University of Barcelona.

I went abroad for the first time when I was 13. I went to London with my English teacher for a few days. When I was 22, I spent a month with a family in Croydon in south London. Until then, I had spent my holidays on the Costa Brava or in the Pyrenees with my parents, brother and sisters. I have very happy memories of those holidays. Then I married a British man and the following 20 years, or more were marked by journeys back and forth between Vic and Oxford and other destinations in Europe.

In 1990, I started working as an English teacher in the language school at the University of Vic. Until then, I had worked as a primary and secondary English teacher in two schools in Barcelona. In 1995, I was offered a position in the Faculty of Education teaching English to undergraduate primary trainee teachers. Since then, I have been involved in the management and implementation of various teacher training programmes. In 2014, I read my PhD on the acquisition of English as a Foreign Language in EFL and CLIL contexts. I became the coordinator for the primary teacher training programme at UVic and I have recently taken responsibility for the university’s Infant and primary education joint programme.

MO: You are a TIG leader and a board member. When and how did you get involved with ETEN?

AV: My first spring ETEN conference was in Gothenburg in 2017. My colleague Àngel Raluy suggested that I join the conference. At that time, he was working for the internationalisation of the teacher training programmes at our university, and I was involved in the creation of internship programmes abroad for our students.

I knew very little about ETEN at that time, but I decided to apply for an Erasmus grant and I send an abstract for a presentation in the Internationalisation TIG. Cecilia Nihlen wrote to me and suggested that I should do the presentation in the Language Education TIG which she had just created. It was a great experience and a good introduction to ETEN. A few months later, in autumn 2017, Cecilia Nihlen visited the University of Vic together with Karmen Johansson. She convinced me that Karmen and I should become the leader of the Language Education TIG and try to make it more important. Even though my ETEN experience was very limited, as was my knowledge of the network, I accepted the challenge. Together with my colleagues Àngel Raluy, Núria Medina and Silvia Codinachs, who is now our ECO, we organised the spring conference in 2019, the last face-to-face event before COVID. In autumn 2022, I was approached by the nomination committee about the possibility of running for election as a board member. It took me a little while to make a decision, but some of my colleagues at college and my family encouraged me to go for it, and I decided to run for a position on the board. I was really honoured to be elected in spring 2023.

MO: What is the added value of ETEN?

AV: What I value most of all in this organisation is its people, ‘the ETEN family’: people who are interested in their professions, who are open and friendly. Since 2017, I have met many interesting people and, through networking, I have learned and grown professionally and personally. As a TIG leader, I have been able to listen to colleagues and friends in my field doing interesting and inspiring presentations, sharing their knowledge and their expertise through amazing and inspiring workshops. Being surrounded by people who are involved in the world of education from many different perspectives makes me feel at home. I always look forward to the conferences. They provide a source of fresh air away from my day-to-day life at university.

Categories: Language Education, Portraits