Graduate
L.A.L.S. Current Ph.D Students
FALL 2022
Current graduate students in the Linguistics and Applied Language Studies (LALS) Ph.D program at the University of South Florida.
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.
Email Website
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.
Email
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.
Email
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.
Email
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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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.
Email Website
Sean has both an M.A. in English and a Graduate Certificate in TESOL from the University of Texas at Arlington. He has extensive undergraduate teaching experience and has also taught English abroad in Japan. Sean's current research interests include language assessment, second language writing, and English as a lingua franca.
Email Website
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.
Email Website
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.
Email
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.
Email
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.
Email Website
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).
Email Research Gate Website
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.
Email Research Gate
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.
Email
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.
Email
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.
Email
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.
Email Website
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.
Email