Our first presenter was the ever composed and professional Ema Ushioda. I hadn’t seen Ema since my Dublin days (she was a PhD student at Trinity College Dublin while I was there doing my M.Phil many years ago) and it was really lovely to see her again.  She has a knack of presenting complex topics such as identity, agency, intrinsic motivation, student beliefs, attribution theory, and even (as David McLoughlin will be pleased to hear) wormholes (!) with such clarity.  She drew on research done in various contexts, Peanuts cartoons, a hypothetical tale of disappointment in love and even Tom Sawyer in order to make her points.  Ema was the reason that we had the pleasure of Marion Williams’ company for the first part of the morning – she takes over  as President of IATEFL and naturally has a very busy schedule yet still found time to attend.  She had plenty of good questions and comments to contribute to the debate too. I will be posting Ema’s PowerPoint here just as soon as I have figured out how to do it. A complete copy of her paper will appear in a forthcoming newsletter.  The British Council discussion thread also discusses the presentation and some of the points that arose.