istván kecskés is a distinguished professor of the state university of new york, usa. he teaches graduate courses in pragmatics, second language acquisition and bilingualism at suny, albany. he is the president of the american pragmatics association (ampra) and the caslar (chinese as a second language research) association. he is the founder and co-director of the barcelona summer school on bi- and multilingualism (until 2016), and the founder and co-director of sorbonne, paris – suny, albany graduate student symposium (present).