Speakers

Keynote, Featured and Spotlight Speakers will provide a variety of perspectives from different academic and professional backgrounds. This page provides information about presenters. For details of presentations and other programming, please visit the Programme page.

To be announced

Krystal Chryssomallis

Photographer and Cultural Producer, United States
Thomas G. Endres

University of Northern Colorado, United States
David McNeill

University of the Sacred Heart, Japan

Become a Plenary Speaker

At IAFOR, we are committed to delivering exceptional conferences that inspire and challenge academics and professionals from around the world. Since 2009 over 50,000 academics have chosen to present their research at our conferences. To ensure we offer the best content possible, we rely on established plenary speakers to share their insights, experience, and ideas with our diverse audience.

Excellent plenary speakers are central to our conferences, ensuring that timely, innovative and engaging content is presented to our audiences around the world. If you would like to be considered for a speaking slot at one of our conferences, please apply below.

Apply to Speak

Previous Speakers

View details of speakers at past MediAsia conferences via the links below.

MediAsia2025	MediAsia2024	MediAsia2023
MediAsia2022	MediAsia2021	MediAsia2020
MediAsia2019	MediAsia2018	MediAsia2017
MediAsia2016	MediAsia2015	MediAsia2014
MediAsia2013	MediAsia2012	MediAsia2011
MediAsia2010

Krystal Chryssomallis

Photographer and Cultural Producer, United States

Biography

Krystal Chryssomallis is an internationally recognised photographer, cultural producer, visual storyteller, and educator whose work is devoted to amplifying the good through stories and experiences that foster trust, empathy, connection, and lived impact.

Over the past two decades, her work has taken her across more than 60 countries, shaping global productions, large-scale live events, and international storytelling initiatives, including projects staged at six UNESCO World Heritage sites. Her collaborations span global brands, humanitarian initiatives, and institutional partners, including UNICEF, NASA, PBS, Boeing, IMAX, Disney, FIFA, and the World Wildlife Fund. Her fine art photography translates this global experience into enduring works held in private collections, cultural institutions and hospitality environments, including an exhibition at Xposure in Sharjah, UAE.

She has also served as a judge for the Travel Photographer of the Year Awards and The Drum Awards, and as a Panda Ambassador for WWF. Across her work in cultural production, photography, storytelling, education, humanitarian advocacy, and social impact, she explores how perception shapes human connection, decision-making, creativity, adaptability, and meaningful action across language, culture, and difference.

She has recently served as a judge for the Travel Photographer of the Year Awards and has been preparing to travel to Sri Lanka, serving as a mentor for this year’s winners. War intervened, so those plans have changed, and she is now preparing a masterclass via Zoom. See Krystal’s photography portfolio at: https://www.krystalan.com/portfolio

Workshop Presentation (2026) | Luck Is a Skill: A Real-Time Framework for Navigating Uncertainty and Creating Better Outcomes

Thomas G. Endres

University of Northern Colorado, United States

Biography

Thomas G. Endres is Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Northern Colorado, United States, where he teaches courses in communication theory, popular culture, group dynamics, and leadership. In a career marked primarily by administrative responsibilities, he found time to conduct research using Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) to identify the use of stories in creating rhetorical communities. He is author and photographer of Sturgis Stories: Celebrating the People of the World’s Largest Motorcycle Rally (Kirk House, 2002) and My Costume, Myself: Celebrating Stories of Cosplay and Beyond (Kirk House, 2001, 2023) and co-author, with Deanna D. Sellnow, of The Rhetorical Power of Popular Culture: Considering Mediated Texts, 4th ed. (Sage, 2023). His updated essay on SCT will appear in the forthcoming 2nd edition of Wiley-Blackwell's The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy. He has delivered more than 250 presentations, workshops, and keynote addresses across the United States (including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico) and abroad, including presentations in Austria, China, the Czech Republic, Japan, Spain, Thailand, Türkiye, and the United Kingdom.

Keynote Presentation (2026) | TBA

Previous Presentations

Keynote Presentation (2022) | Costume Conversations: Resilience and Representation in Cosplay and Beyond

David McNeill

University of the Sacred Heart, Japan

Biography

Dr David McNeill was born in the United Kingdom and raised in Ireland. He was awarded his PhD from Napier University in Edinburgh in 1998. He has since taught at universities in Ireland, the United Kingdom, China, and Japan, and is currently Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of the Sacred Heart, Japan. He is an editor and board member of the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, was previously a correspondent for The Independent, The Economist and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and a columnist for The Mainichi Shimbun and The Japan Times. Dr McNeill is a long-time member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan and currently edits No1 Shimbun, the FCCJ’s house magazine, while also serving as co-chair of the FCCJ’s Freedom of the Press Committee. He is co-author of Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster (Palgrave Macmillan 2012) and Japanese Rebels: Non-conformists in a Conformist Society (Routledge, 2026).

Keynote Presentation (2026) | TikToking Ourselves to Death: Journalism in Japan in the Age of Social Media