Email: portico-services@ucl.ac.uk
Help Desk: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ras/portico/helpdesk
- Associate Professor
- IOE - Culture, Communication & Media
- UCL Institute of Education
Having grown up in the US, I completed my BA in English there and taught English in a junior high school. I then taught ESOL for many years in Japan and Australia, mainly in higher education. My journey into teaching in higher education started when I decided to study applied linguistics for my MA at the University of Sydney where I also taught English for Academic Purposes, then spent a semester as a visiting academic at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda on a Rotary International university teacher's grant. Returning to Australia, I completed my doctoral coursework at the University of Sydney, where I taught on the MEd TESOL, as well as in the university's Learning Centre, and Centre for English Teaching. I moved back to Japan in 2005 and taught at Sophia University in Tokyo for eleven years, in which time I completed my PhD part time through the Victoria University of Wellington. Also in that time, I served as president of the Tokyo chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching from 2011-2013. At Sophia, I served as the Head of the Core Program and Director of the Sophia Writing Centre in the Faculty of Liberal Arts. I spent one year as a visiting academic at Trinity College Dublin (2014-2015). In 2016 I relocated to the UK for a position at the University of Bath, where I served as the Director of Studies for the PhD in Education. I started my position as Associate Professor in UCL IOE’s Centre for Applied Linguistics in September 2018 as the programme leader for the MA TESOL Pre-Service. I have served as Academic Head of Learning and Teaching for the department Culture, Communication, and Media since October 2020.


My research explores implications of globalisation for L2 writing, language education, and higher education. I was principal investigator on the British Academy-funded project ‘Exploring the teaching-research nexus in higher education’ (since 2018), and a British Council-funded project investigating language related challenges in English medium instruction in China with colleagues from the University of Oxford (since 2019).
I have published in journals such as Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, Teaching in Higher Education, Applied Linguistics, Journal of Second Language Writing, Language Teaching, Language Teaching Research, System, TESOL Quarterly, and ELT Journal. I have authored and edited several books on research methods in applied linguistics (Routledge, Bloomsbury), and have forthcoming books on English medium instruction in higher education. I am currently Co-Editor for System and Co-Editor for Cambridge Elements: 'Language Teaching' (Cambridge University Press) and serve on several journal editorial boards.
I am currently module leader for Researching Second Language Learning and teach on the core modules for the MA TESOL Pre-Service programme. I also teach on the module Higher Education Institutions as Organisations: their strategic management on the MBA in Higher Education Studies programme.
Doctoral Supervision: 1 post-doc and 11 doctoral students; I am unable to take on more at this time.
Agata Mikolajewska, PhD: Linguistic challenges in English medium instruction in tertiary education in Poland
Mai Oyama, PhD: Japanese EFL learners' pragmatic development in the production of speech acts
Dandan Zhu, PhD: Positioning of foreign teachers of English in Chinese secondary schools: a case study
Nathan Thomas, PhD: Exploring the sociocultural negotiation of identity, motivation, and strategic behaviour of East Asian students in a UK university context
Tolera Simie, PhD: The impact of EMI on the quality of education in Ethiopian higher education institutions
Josef Mueller, EdD: Mediation activities in language learning in response to the revised Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching and Assessment.
Tim Hampson, PhD: English for academic purposes and the teacher-research nexus: a mixed grounded theory study
Kan Chai, PhD (lead supervisor: John O'Regan): Intercultural communication in the tertiary classroom: The voices of the students and teachers
Sin Wang Chong, PhD (lead supervisor: Talia Isaacs): Learning-oriented language assessment in formal and non-formal EFL contexts: A narrative inquiry from an ecological perspective
Emma Quick, EdD (lead supervisor: John Gray): English medium instruction in a trilingual Italian university
Michael Beaney, EdD (lead supervisor: Mary Richardson)