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, as well as 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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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 sociolinguistics, culture, discourse analysis, and SLA.
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Savannah Cayson                                                 Prior to joining the LALS program, Savannah earned her MA in TESOL from Florida State University. Savannah has experience teaching EFL in Colombia as well as teaching ESL and Spanish in the United States. Her research interests include translanguaging, negotiation of meaning strategies, and CALL.                      Email

Kübra Çekmegeli
Kübra earned her bachelor's degree in English Language Teaching (ELT) from Hacettepe University in Ankara in 2018. After completing her bachelor's degree, Kübra taught English at the post-secondary level for two years. Prior to joining the LALS program, Kübra received her master's degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2022. Her research interests are classroom discourse, conversation analysis, L2 interaction, and language teacher education.
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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 include Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, L2 phonology, and CALL.
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Rikiya Kawano                                                      Rikiya received his MA in Applied Linguistics / TESOL from the University of South Florida. He possesses extensive experience teaching Japanese as a foreign language at the undergraduate and middle school levels. His research interests include sociolinguistics, SLA, heritage languages, and CALL.           Email  LinkedIn

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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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 interests 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 from Middlebury College. His research explores the links between language and social identities, especially in relation to race and socio-economic class. He is particularly interested in critical approaches in Sociolinguistics and Discourse Analysis.  His research also focuses on Spanish and Haitian Creole.
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Sarah Rahman                                                     Having received her BA from The Ohio State University, Sarah completed her MA in TESOL at the University of South Florida before joining the LALS program. She has previously tutored students in French and Linguistics. Sarah’s research interests include academic writing, digital discourse, and SLA.                    Email  LinkedIn

Memry Rasch                                                        Memry received her BA in French from the University of South Florida and her MA in French and Francophone Studies with a specialization in French Linguistics from the University of Florida. She taught French at the high school level for five years. Her research interests include SLA, individual differences/motivation, and CALL.                      Email

Juan M. Rostrán Valle
Juan received his BA in TEFL from Universidad Centroamericana (Nicaragua) and his MA in TESOL from the SIT-Graduate Institute in Vermont. He has experience teaching EFL/ESL and Spanish in different academic settings, both in the USA and Nicaragua. His research interests include second language teaching methodology, L2 writing, and error treatment in the L2 classroom.
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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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