UMass Boston

Student Resources

We offer concentrations in Bilingual Education, English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction for English language learners (ELLs), and Foreign Language Pedagogy (EFL and any other language taught in a foreign context). We present a wide range of opportunities to students interested in conducting research, working with community-based organizations, or preparing to teach in various contexts, such as public schools, K-12, adult education, and language schools in the United States and abroad. Many of our students go on to pursue doctoral work in such fields as linguistics, education, language policy, and literacy studies.

Looking to find us on campus? We are located in the McCormack Building, 4th Floor, room 456 (opposite of the Anthropology department).

Applied Linguistics PhD Students & Alumni

Current Doctoral Candidates & Alumni

Doctoral Candidates

Aram Ali Ahmed, Dissertation: Neoliberalism and Higher Education: English as Medium of Instruction Policy in Iraqi Kurdistan. Committee: Dr. Panayota Gounari (Chair), Dr. Jennifer Sclafani, Dr. Prem Phyak (Teachers College - Columbia University), Dr. Birgul Yilmaz (University of Exeter). 

Wonguk Cho, Dissertation: Between Marginalization and Empowerment: Language Ideologies and Identity Negotiation of Refugee Children in South Korea. Committee: Dr. Christian Chun (Chair), Dr. Panayota Gounari, Dr. Joseph Sung-Yul Park (National University of Singapore).

Iuliia Fakhrutdinova, Dissertation: The Negotiated Identities of Refugee-background Women during Resettlement. Committee: Dr. Avary Carhill-Poza (Chair), Dr. Panayota Gounari, Dr. Raichle Farrelly (University of Colorado Boulder), Dr. Anna De Fina (Georgetown University).

Tina S. Randall, Dissertation: “Aquí Nadie Habla Español”: Ethnic Identity Development and Belonging among Dispersed Spanish Heritage Speakers. Committee: Dr. Corinne Etienne (Chair), Dr. Jennifer Sclafani, Dr. Rosalyn Negrón. 

Jasen Sousa, Dissertation:  Geosemiotics of the Invisible Night: A Diurnal and Nocturnal Linguistic Landscape of Boston’s Chinatown Neighborhood. Committee: Dr. Jennifer Sclafani (Chair), Dr. Christian Chun, Dr. XiaoFang Yao (The University of Hong Kong).

Rachel Tianxuan Wang, Dissertation: Bridging Digital Worlds: Exploring Digital Literacy Practices of Chinese Immigrant Youth across Home and School. Committee: Dr. Avary Carhill-Poza (Chair), Dr. Jennifer Sclafani, Dr. Guofang Li (University of British Columbia).

Jacqueline Wilkinson, Dissertation: Navigating indigenous knowledge and language practices: The case of urban Quechua. Committee: Dr. Panayota Gounari (chair), Dr. Jennifer Sclafani, Dr. Americo Mendoza Mori (Harvard University). 

 

Alumni

Rosiane Barcelos de Oliveira, PhD (2024) Dissertation: Socialization, Heritage Language Maintenance, and Family Language Policy: An Ethnographic Case Study of a Trilingual Family. Committee: Dr. Jennifer Sclafani (Chair), Dr. Avary Carhill-Poza, Dr. Shulamit Kopeliovich (Herzog College, Alon Shvut).

Julia Donnelly Spiegelman, PhD (2024) Dissertation: “Just Existing” Beyond the Gender Binary: Contexts, Agency, and Investment of Non-Binary Teens in French and Spanish World Language Classes. Committee: Dr. Kimberly Urbanski (Chair), Dr. Corinne Etienne, Dr. Meike Wernicke (University of British Columbia), Dr. Lal Zimman (University of California Santa Barbara).

Juan David Gutierrez, PhD (2023) Dissertation: Counterstories of Multilingual Asian Students in Higher Education. Committee: Dr. Panayota Gounari (chair), Dr. Kimberly Urbanski, Dr. Tara Parker. 

Michael Jacob, PhD (2026) Dissertation: Gaeilge Digiteach: Irish Language Revitalization through Musical Youth Movements. Committee: Dr. Panayota Gounari (Chair), Dr. Corinne Etienne, Dr. Heather Sparling (Cape Breton University).

Rachel La Russo, PhD (2026) Dissertation: Identity Construction Among 1.5-Generation University Students in ESL Courses. Committee: Dr. Corinne Etienne (chair), Dr. Avary Carhill-Poza, Dr. Rosalyn Negrón, Dr. Patsy Lightbown (Concordia University, Montreal). 

Abdelkrim Mouhib, PhD (2024) Dissertation: Understanding Superdiversity Through Linguistic Landscape. Committee: Dr. Christian Chun (Chair), Dr. Jennifer Sclafani, Dr. Said Bennis (Mohammed V University, Rabat).

Nasiba Narova, PhD (2025) Dissertation: Experiencing Race: Exploring Perceptions of Race among First-Year College International Students. Committee: Dr. Panayota Gounari (Chair), Dr. Corinne Etienne, Dr. Hadi Banat.

Ghadah Noorelahi, PhD (2024) Dissertation: Promoting Saudi Learners’ Coherence and Cohesion Writing Development Using Dynamic Assessment – An Approach for IELTS Preparation. Committee: Dr. Kimberly Urbanski (Chair), Dr. Panayota Gounari, Dr. Rebekha Abbuhl. 

Nghia Minh Nguyen, PhD (2026) Dissertation: Obuchenie Pedagogy for L2 Literacy Development of Adults with Interrupted Education in L1. Committee: Dr. Kimberly Urbanski (Chair), Dr. Panayota Gounari, Dr. Gale Stam (National Louis University).

Jesse Rubio, PhD (2023) Dissertation: Educational Language Policy for Multilingual Learners: Leveraging Policy’s Multiple Dimensions and Discourses. Committee: Dr. Avary Carhill-Poza (Chair), Dr. Panayota Gounari, Dr. Amanda Kibler (Oregon State University), Dr. Jeff Bale (University of British Columbia).

Vannessa Quintana Sarria, PhD (2025) Dissertation:  Multilingual English Teaching: Challenges and Possibilities in the Secondary Mainstream Classroom. Committee: Dr. Avary Carhill-Poza (Chair), Dr. Panayota Gounari, Dr. Rosalyn Negrón, Dr. Manka Varghese (University of Washington), Dr. Christine Leider (UMass Lowell).

Areas of Inquiry

Dr. Carhill-Poza | Bilingual/multilingual Education & Social Resources and Social Contexts in Language Learning
Dr. Carhill-Poza's research examines the ways social resources and social contexts shape the language learning experiences and outcomes of emergent bilingual youth in urban schools. She connects policies and practices at the school, district, state, and national level to opportunities for immigrant adolescents who are learning English to develop supportive relationships and engage their multilingual repertoires in learning academic English and academic content.

Dr. Chun | Critical Applied Linguistics & Social Resources and Social Contexts in Language Learning
Dr. Chun's upcoming research will be conducting a sociolinguistic ethnography of the Chinatowns in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles, focusing on the immigrants’ identities and their attempts to assimilate which would include their access to, or lack thereof to the standardized English learning. This research also addresses the racial formations of second-generation (and third, etc.) Chinese Americans who have (dis)connections to Chinatown through their families and heritage language loss.

Dr. Etienne | Bilingual/Multilingual Education
Focusing on representations of school and the French language in Francophone Cinema, Corinne Etienne aims to help student-teachers decipher ideologies embedded in film semiotic systems and become aware of the social meaning of their language choices and uses. This project is part of a general inquiry into language classrooms and teacher’s talk (feedback; explanations; modeling, etc.) focusing on multiculturalism, integration, links between schools and the construction of national identity (Strand, 2009; Vincendeau, 2012).

Dr. Gounari | Critical Applied Linguistics
Dr. Gounari’s research is grounded in Critical Applied Linguistics and focuses on how language and discourse shape power in education, politics, and public life. Her work explores language ideologies, language policy, neoliberalism, coloniality, and far-right authoritarian populism, while also considering the role of pedagogy in struggles for justice and social transformation.

Dr. Lima Becker | Bilingual/Dual Language Education, Children’s Language and Literacy Development, and Immigrant Family Engagement
Dr. Lima Becker’s research focuses on how immigrant children, families, and educators navigate language, power, and inequity in schools, particularly in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs. Her current projects explore Latiné immigrant caregivers’ interactions with their children’s K–12 schools through a raciolinguistic lens, students’ and families’ languaging and counterstorytelling within immigrant households, and teachers’ language ideologies, practices, and experiences in DLBE settings.

Dr. Sclafani | Narrative Analysis & Political Discourse analysis
Dr. Sclafani's research analyzes the discourse of politics and public policy, with a focus on issues that affect local communities in Boston. She is currently analyzing communication about food justice and food insecurity initiatives in the region, and is developing a professional development unit for K-12 science teachers to integrate multiliteracies pedagogies and critical language awareness into their curricula to boost multilingual students’ academic content knowledge while empowering them as local agents of social change.

Dr. Urbanski | Sociocultural Theory
Dr. Urbanski is currently working on projects from a Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory Perspective including second language literacy development using Systemic Functional Linguistics for students and L2 literacy pedagogy for teachers, tracing the development of emotion-cognition (perezhivanie) of students in various developmental contexts, and the dialectics of gesture and pedagogy.