Graduate

Melike Akay
Melike received her BA from Bogazici (Bosphorus) University and completed her MA in Foreign Language Education. Melike has experience teaching EFL courses at the university level besides working as a research assistant in the Department of ELT in Turkey. Her research interests include pragmalinguistics, digital discourse analysis, and multimodal communication.
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Khalid Alghamdi
Prior to joining the LALS program in 2019, Khalid has earned two master’s degrees. One in business administration from Alfaisal University, Saudi Arabia, and the other in linguistics from Ball State University, IN. Khalid has experince teaching EFL at the univerity level. His research interests include busniness discourse, pragmatics in SLA, and language attitude.
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Samiah Alrwaily
Samiah is an English lecturer from Saudi Arabia who joined the LALS program in 2021. She received her MA studies in TESOL from Missouri State University. Her current research interests are: the impact of identity and culture on SLA, L2 writing, and technology-based learning.
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Nafla Alshahrani
Nafla received her MA in Applied Linguistics from Southern Illinois University. She is a lecturer in English department at Jazan University, Saudi Arabia. Her research interests include in sociolinguistics, culture, discourse analysis, and SLA.
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Oksana Bomba
Oksana started studying Applied Linguistics in Ukraine. She received her MA in Applied Linguistics/TESL from the University of South Florida in 2018 and joined the LALS program the same year. Oksana has taught English, Russian, and Linguistics in multiple contexts. Her research interests include second language acquisition, academic writing, and corpus linguistics.
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Tuc Chau
Tuc joined the LALS program in 2018 after receiving his MA in Applied Linguistics from USF. He has experience teaching both ESL and linguistics content courses at the university level. His research interests include L2 writing and pronunciation.
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Zakaria Fahmi
Zakaria joined the LALS program in Fall 2019 after receiving his Mater's degree in Liberal Arts from Middle Tennessee State University. Zakaria has been teaching ESL, French, and Arabic in various settings. He is interested in the discursive formations of language in education, media, and society, language ideologies, multilingualism, language contact, corpus linguistics, and ELF.
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Tania Ferronato
Tania received her MA in Linguistics from the University of Padua, Italy, and she was a Fulbright FLTA scholar in 2020. She has previous experience in teaching ESL and Italian as a foreign language. Her research interests are Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, L2 phonology, and CALL.
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Antonella Gazzardi
Prior to joining the LASLprogram in 2018, Antonella received her MA in Applied Linguistics:ESL from USF in 2016. She has experience teaching ESL, FL, and linguistics content classes at the university level, Her research interests include sciolinguistics, langauge ideologies, and code-switching.
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Ozge Guney
Prior to joining the LALS program in 2018, Özge completed two M.A. degrees in Linguistics and Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Turkey. She has experience of teaching Turkish and English(ESL&EFL) at tertiary level. Her research interests include identity (particularly religious and sexual identity), multiculturalism, Global Englishes, and critical pedagogy in the English classroom.
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Jihye Kim
Jihye received her MA in English Linguistics from Hannam University in South Korea. She has experience as a Teaching and Research Assistant at Hannam University and ACCESSS (Academic Center for Corpus-based English Studies and Statistical Solutions). Her research interests include social issues that can be examined through linguistic research.
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Dacota Liska
Dacota received her MA in Applied Linguistics: ESL from USF in 2020. She has experience tutoring English and Spanish at the university level. Her research interests include online discourse (including electronic word-of-mouth communications), discursive identity construction and multimodal discourse.
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Francesca Marino
Prior to joining the LALS program in 2021, Francesca Marino received her M.A. in Languages and Intercultural Communication in the Euro-Mediterranean Area in 2018 from the University of Naples L’Orientale, Italy. Her research interests include Multimodal Discourse, Sociolinguistics, and Discursive Identity Construction (particularly sexual and gender identity).
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Yuxuan Mu
Before joining in the LALS program, Yuxuan Mu received his MA in Applied Linguistics from University College London in 2021. His research intertests include translanguaging, language and social media, and identity studies.
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Benjamin Puterbaugh
Benjamin received his BA from Oberlin College and his MA in Spanish, with a specialization in Linguistics, from Middlebury College. He has worked in intercultural organizations, including teaching for CIEE’s study abroad program in the Dominican Republic. He is interested in sociolinguistics, identity in SLA, study abroad, and intercultural communication.
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Beibei Ren
Beibei Ren received her MA in English Language and Literature in 2018 from Nanjing University, China. Before joining the LALS program, she had two-year EFL teaching experience at the university level in China. Her research interests include second language writing and English for Academic Purposes.
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Oxana Sidorova
Oxana received her MA in Latino/a and Latin American Studies from the University of Connecticut. Oxana has experience working as an English, Spanish, and Russian educator in various contexts in Russia, Mexico, Colombia, and the US. Her research interests include bilingualism and multilingualism, SLA, intercultural competence, the role of language in identity construction, and indigenous language revitalization and preservation.
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María José Torres Centurion
María received her MA in TESOL from Kent State University and her MA in Linguistics from Ball State University. She has experience teaching EFL in Argentina. She has also taught ESL and Spanish classes at the university-level in the United States. Her research interests include bilingualism and direct applications of translanguaging in the classroom.
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Luoxiangyu Zhang
Prior to joining the LALS program, Xiangyu received her MA in TESOL from Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Xiangyu's research areas fall broadly into sociolinguistics, gender studies, and how these topics are reflected in online discourse and pedagogical materials.
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