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Prof Sin-Wang CHONG (SFHEA, FRSA)Founder & Co-Director
Sin Wang (Ph.D., SFHEA, FRSA) is Director of Impact and Innovation, and Affiliated TESOL Scholar at the International Education Institute, University of St Andrews and Head of Evidence Synthesis at the National Institute of Teaching in England. Sin Wang is Visiting Professor at the Education University of Hong Kong and Visiting Scholar at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, having (had) other visiting and visiting and adjunct professorship appointments at universities in England, the United States, and United Arab Emirates. Previously, he was Associate Professor in Language Education at the University of Edinburgh. He is Associate Editor of two SSCI-indexed journals, Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching and Higher Education Research & Development. He is Section Editor of Elsevier's Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (3rd ed., forthcoming). He has published quite extensively on such topics as language and educational assessment, computer-assisted language learning, and research synthesis.
Sin-Wang is actively involved in a number of professional organisations including British Educational Research Association (BERA), British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL), and International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA). Sin-Wang is Chair of the Scottish Association for Teaching English as a Foreign Language and serves on the governing councils of BERA and BAAL in the capacity of Council Member and Executive Committee Member. Sin-Wang co-convenes the Early Career Researcher Network at BERA, founded and convenes the Research Synthesis in Applied Linguistics Special Interest Group at BAAL, and co-founded and co-convenes the Open Scholarship in Applied Linguistics Research Network at AILA. |
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Prof Masatoshi SATOCo-Director & Professor
Masatoshi Sato (PhD: McGill University) is a Professor at Universidad Andrés Bello, Chile. He has taught English and Japanese in Japan, US, Chile, and Canada. His research agenda is to conduct theoretical and applied research in order to facilitate the dialogue between practitioners and researchers. His research interest includes instructed second language acquisition, peer interaction, metacognition, corrective feedback, learner psychology, teacher beliefs, and the research-practice relationship. In addition to his research publications in international journals, he has co-edited volumes from John Benjamins (2016 with Susan Ballinger: Peer Interaction and Second Language Learning), Routledge (2017 with Shawn Loewen: The Routledge Handbook of Instructed Second Language Acquisition; 2019: Evidence-Based Second Language Pedagogy), Language Teaching Research (2021 with Kata Csizér: Learner Psychology and Instructed Second Language Acquisition), and The Modern Language Journal (2022 with Shawn Loewen: Connecting second language research and pedagogy). He is the recipient of the 2014 ACTFL/MLJ Paul Pimsleur Award. He is currently the Editor of Language Awareness.
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Prof Hayo REINDERSResearcher Advisor & Professor
Dr. Hayo Reinders is TESOL Professor and Director of the doctoral programme at Anaheim University in the USA as well as Professor of Education in New Zealand. Hayo is Editor of the journal Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching (published by Taylor & Francis) and edits a book series on “New Language Learning and Teaching Environments”. He founded the Institute for Teacher Leadership. His interest are in teacher empowerment, learner autonomy, and educational technology.
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Dr Luke PLONSKYResearcher Advisor & Associate Professor
Luke Plonsky (PhD Michigan State) is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University. His work, focusing primarily on SLA and research methods, has appeared in over 90 articles, book chapters, and books. Luke is Associate Editor of Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Managing Editor of Foreign Language Annals, Co-Editor of De Gruyter Mouton's Series on Language Acquisition, and Co-Director of IRIS.
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Dr Jim MCKINLEYResearcher Advisor & Associate Professor
Jim McKinley, SFHEA, is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and TESOL at UCL Institute of Education, University of London. Having started his academic career at the University of Sydney, Australia, he then taught for many years in Japan’s oldest EMI program (Sophia University in Tokyo) and settled in the UK in 2016. His research explores implications of globalisation for L2 writing, language education, and higher education studies, particularly concerning the concept of a teaching-research nexus. Jim is co-author and co-editor of several books on research methods in applied linguistics. His work has appeared in journals such as Higher Education and Applied Linguistics, and he currently serves as an editor-in-chief for the journal System.
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Mrs Jennifer COWELLPractitioner Advisor, In-sessional Leader, & Director of Studies
Jennifer Cowell (FHEA) is an award-winning educator who is passionate about designing accessible and inclusive learning materials which motivate students’ learning.
Jennifer’s teaching experience has ranged from young learners to adults in a wide variety of different educational settings. Her TESOL leadership experience includes team leader/programme leader in UK and French universities, plus as a language school Director of Studies. She is currently the SATEFL Membership Secretary and was a member of the expert panel who updated the QAA Linguistics Benchmarking Statement (2023). She applies her wide-ranging practitioner knowledge to her research, with particular interest in the collaboration between TESOL and discipline-specific university lecturers, plus foci within several applied linguistics subfields. This has led to her presenting at numerous conferences world-wide on a range of topics. She holds an MSc TESOL (distinction) from the University of St Andrews and an MSc History from the University of Edinburgh. Her additional, and numerous, qualifications include a CELTA and a PGCLTHE. |
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Ms Emily BRYSONPractitioner Advisor & Author, Teacher Trainer, ESOL Lecturer
Emily Bryson is an author, teacher trainer, graphic facilitator, visual recorder and ESOL lecturer. She has written various print and digital materials, including National Geographic Learning’s Voices series, 50 Ways to Teach Life Skills and A-Z of ESOL. She is a guest blogger for Ellii.com and has mentored action research projects for OTLA (Outstanding Teaching Learning and Assessment). Her specific interests are graphic facilitation, literacy, inclusion and accessibility. She often sketchnotes conference talks and workshops at conferences. Her online courses in Graphic Facilitation for ELT professionals have been described as ‘the nicest corner of the internet’. She believes TESOL Graphics helps bridge the gap between academia and teaching practice by making research more accessible.
You can find more about her and view her sketchnotes at www.EmilyBrysonELT.com or @EmilyBrysonELT on social. |
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Dr Tasnima AKTARResearcher Member
Dr Tasnima Aktar is an Associate Lecturer in TESOL in the Department of Education at the University of York, UK (and an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Comilla University, Bangladesh). She is also an Associate Fellow of the Advanced Higher Education, UK, a Cambridge CELTA qualified teacher, and the Convenor of Research SIG, TESOL Society of Bangladesh. She has been teaching TESOL, EAP, EFL for more than a decade in different Higher Education institutions in the UK and Bangladesh. She publishes several articles in journals including Higher Education Pedagogies and Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, and presents papers at various conferences including BAAL, BERA, IATEFL. She obtained her PhD on metacognition in EFL listening and her research interest includes metacognition and strategies, teacher research and teacher development, and educational technology.
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Mr Mehdi Shaahdadi GOUGHARIPractitioner Member
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Miss Ming Sum KONGPractitioner Member
Ming Sum Kong is a pre-sessional EAP tutor. She is also a master graduate and a doctoral student in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at the University of St Andrews in the UK. She has a strong interest in linguistics, multilingual education and language use in English classrooms. Her master’s dissertation was about Hong Kong ESL learners’ acquisition of conjunctions. In her doctoral studies, she aims to look into translanguaging in an EAP context. Apart from her studies and teaching, she is also involved in different international and local research projects.
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Mr Paul JOHNSON
Practitioner Member
Paul Johnson teaches English for Academic Purposes, Critical Thinking, and College Writing at SolBridge International School of Business in Daejeon, Korea. He has an M.A. in Philosophy and is working towards his MSc TESOL with a specialism in Technology for Teaching at the University of St. Andrews. You can learn more about his work at his website, an interactive process.
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Ms Meghan BOWLING-JOHNSONPractitioner Member
Meghan Bowling-Johnson works at the University of Stirling as an academic skills tutor and a teacher on the Access programme. She also works on projects related to supporting international students and co-lead on a recent university initiative which focussed on international student academic induction and language support.
She completed an MSc in TESOL, with a specialism in EAP, at the University of St Andrews in 2021 where she focused on intercultural communicative competence through technology in her dissertation research. She has a number of interests including using technology in teaching, intercultural/transcultural awareness, acculturation and social justice. |
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Ms Sheng GUOPractitioner Member
Sheng Guo is a master student in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in-service at University College London in the UK. Her research interests lie in materials development and emotions in language teaching and learning. She started working as a teaching assistant in Oral English Teaching and Research Centre at East China Normal University as an undergraduate. And afterwards, she accumulated 7 years’ working experience teaching English at a top senior high school in Shanxi Province, China. Currently, she is also working on a two-year China’s foreign language teaching materials research project on senior high English textbook use from a phenomenographic approach.
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Ms Farah AKBARResearcher Member
Farah is a doctoral candidate (ABD) in Applied Linguistics, specializing in second language acquisition at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has taught ESL, EFL, and EAP for more than 15 years in the US and Pakistan. Farah also teaches Urdu and Dari as foreign languages in the US. She currently teaches the Pedagogical English Grammar course in the TESOL Certificate Program at Teachers College and serves as a senior teaching mentor to pre-service ESL teachers. Her research interests include interactional and peer feedback, naturalistic L2 development, technology-assisted language teaching and learning, and language teacher education. Farah has authored and co-authored several peer-reviewed research papers. In line with her research interests, Farah serves on several professional organizations including AAAL (the Standing Committee for Online Education and Outreach - Website & Content Development), CALICO (DEI Working Group on Inclusive Research and Leadership), and NYS TESOL Technology-Enhanced Language Learning SIG.
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Ms Jessi JACOBSEN Researcher Member
Jessi Jacobsen is a research assistant at the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL) in San Sebastián, Spain. She holds a MSc in the Cognitive Neuroscience of Language from the University of the Basque Country. Her research focuses on second language acquisition, and more specifically, on the different processes affecting word learning and pronunciation. In addition to research, Jessi worked for several years as an EFL teacher in Spain. Her passion lies at the intersection of psycholinguistic research and actual classroom application. |
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Mr Abdulsamad HUMAIDANResearcher Member
Abdulsamad Humaidan is a Lecturer at the Department of Linguistics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA where he is teaching multilingual (international) undergraduate and graduate students academic writing. Mr. Humaidan has been teaching the English language since 2005, in Yemen and the United States, as a language instructor and a teacher educator at college as well as Intensive English Programs (IEPs). His research interests include teaching and learning English with technology, English for academic purposes, in-classroom assessment, and teacher education. He has co-/presented research sessions and workshops with several faculty members and classmates at regional, national, and international conferences as well as co-published a book chapter, two journal articles, a conference proceeding, and two edited book entries.
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Ms Mélanie Vergara LAVDASResearcher Member
Mélanie is an instructor in the English Pedagogy program at Universidad Andrés Bello in Santiago, Chile. She has taught English as a foreign language in elementary and secondary school settings in Chile and now focuses on EFL teacher training, teaching EFL methodology, assessment, and English language courses. She is a doctoral student in Education and Society at Universidad Andrés Bello, and her research interests include foreign language teaching and learning, second language acquisition (SLA), and teacher education and beliefs. In her doctoral studies, she aims to look into the research-practice gap in the SLA field.
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