Ioana Cretu is the ESPSIG Mark Krzanowski Scholarship winner for the IATEFL 2025 conference in Edinburgh. Here she introduces herself:
My name is Ioana and I am a global villager from Romania and a freelance ESP professional specialised in medical English and scientific writing. I’m also an OET preparation partner and a certified medical translator. That we can connect is one of the deepest mysteries, and I accept the challenge! I love my work, but also my garden, dogs, sci-fi, early mornings, cooking for friends, autumns in Greece. I hear songs in emails and am currently learning Vaalan, the language of the Northern Lights. “Hurry slowly” is my mantra, which is no excuse for my website ioanacretu.ro being half-done, but there you have it. Meet me in Edinburgh and fill in the gaps with joy and laughter!
Meet our Mark Krzanowski winner!
We interviewed Ioana to give her the opportunity to share her emotions and impressions about her participation at the IATEFL conference in Edinburgh 2025. Here are her answers:
1. What made you apply for the ESPSIG scholarship?
It had been some time since I had attended a large conference. I had deliberately been working at a grassroot level, focusing on very specific needs of healthcare professionals and medical scientists. I had already participated in online events by ESPSIG and I thought to myself ‘I’d actually like to meet these people in person’. I felt it was time to re-engage with the broader community and network with fresh perspectives. I also wanted to determine if there was anything of value I could offer from my work with clients, nothing embellished or fabricated. I approached the application process as a reflective exercise and opportunity to take stock. I with three proposal ideas and eventually chose the one I thought would interest a broader audience.
2. Reflecting on your attendance at the IATEFL conference in Edinburgh and the presentation(s) you gave, what did you think of this event?
I am so grateful for this entire experience! This was the best large conference ever attended despite the suspense of learning the PCE programme and logistics quite late (I’m sure this was not intentional). I also LOVED meeting the other winners and I’m now friends with a few. It saddened me that not everyone could make it to Edinburgh due to visa complications. A reminder to never take our privileges and freedoms for granted. I also got the answer to what I was wondering when I applied (see above). Participants in my PCE workshop and main conference talk had positive feedback and invitations to collaborate. The whole event was exceptionally effective at sparking useful conversations with people I’d wanted to meet in person and with brilliant new contacts.
3. What were your impressions of the ESPSIG Pre-Conference event and Showcase?
The PCE served as an excellent introduction for me. The atmosphere was friendly and cosy, with everyone being supportive and making me feel welcomed and appreciated. It was such a pleasure to finally meet Ros Wright, whose books had guided me early in my career, and the other SIG members. The presentations were provoking and insightful. Learning about farmers in Greece was unexpected, and hearing about students in Ukraine was deeply moving. My only regret was the inability to attend all the parallel workshops. The same positive impressions extend to the Showcase at the main event. I tried to attend as many different sessions as possible that day, but I found myself drawn back again and again to the ESP Showcase due to its compelling topics and speakers.
4. How has your participation at the 2025 IATEFL conference impacted your professional development?
All the workshops, talks, and conversations I was part of in Edinburgh have left a more or less explicit mark on how I am moving forward as a more effective, more connected freelancer. That said, my mantra is ‘hurry slowly’. When I engage with others or offer counsel, I want to do so with knowledge and competence, yet the developments following the IATEFL conference have been swifter than anticipated. As I am writing this, I have already acted on suggestions and invitations extended by participants at my workshop and talk. For one, I recently delivered a webinar to a global audience of teachers of English for healthcare purposes, invited by Ros Wright and the EALTHY association. I am also organising a webinar together with another scholarship winner soon.
5. Tell us about some of the interesting and inspiring ideas you gained from your experience as an ESPSIG scholarship winner.
Keep up with the latest research on how our brains work (thank you, Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel and Faisal Al Saidi). Get radical and bold on scientific writing in the age of AI (thank you, Donald Clark, Kelly Webb-Davies, Sara Ratner). Curate and share samples of my work on fluency and intonation (thank you, Jeremy Beacock). Pilot short coaching sessions with clients (thank you, Petek Sirin and Nazli Hazar). Keep in touch with fellow scholarship winner Anna Hasper on empathic communication. Resurrect the course I used to give on the anatomy of humour, and which was very popular among medical students (thank you, Dorothy Zemach). Get smarter and wiser in planning my financial future (thank you, Nicola Prentis). Become my own version of Catherine Walter (dressed like that). Stay humble.