2019-2020 Event Planning Sub-Committee

Fatemeh Bordbarjavidi is a PhD student in Applied Linguistics and Technology at Iowa State University (ISU). She received her MA in TESOL at University of Northern Iowa (UNI) in 2017. She also earned her BA in English Language and Literature at Azad University in Tehran, Iran, her home country. She has taught ESL courses at Cultural and Intensive English Language Program (CIEP) at UNI during her Master’s program. She also has worked as an EFL instructor for four years in Iran. Currently, she is teaching academic writing courses to international graduate and undergraduate students at ISU. She is also a mentor coordinator and TA/RA for Using Educational Technology in the English Language Classroom Global Online Course (GOC) at ISU. Her research interests are in corpus linguistics, and English for Academic Purposes. More specifically, she is interested in analyzing different features of sentences and grammar complexity in written register. She has presented her works and served as a volunteer at different conferences such as AACL, MIDTESOL, TSLL, and PSLLT. She is also interested in literature, arts, and theatre. She has translated three plays by Joao Rei Villar, a 2011 Emmy Award Winner, from English to Farsi/Persian. She is also interested in classic music and plays Santour which is an Iranian traditional instrument.

Fatemeh Bordbarjavidi

Elif Burhan-Horasanli is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Program at the University of Arizona. She received her M.A. degree from the Teaching English as a Foreign Language Program of Bilkent University. She is a former Fulbright scholar and has taught English courses to domestic and international students both in Turkey and in the U.S.A. Her research focuses on academic discourse socialization, second language writing, and reflective practice in teacher education. She has published her projects in newsletters and journals (TESOL Teacher Education Interest Section Newsletter, Teaching and Teacher Education) and also presented her work at local and international conferences. In 2019, she was one of the recipients of the AAAL Graduate Student Awards. Elif is currently working on her dissertation project, which investigates academic discourse socialization processes involved in international research teams in STEM fields. She can be contacted at elifburhan@email.arizona.edu.

Elif Burhan-Horasanli

Ufuk Keles is a Fulbright grantee from Turkey. He is pursuing his PhD studies in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Alabama, USA. Before, he was an English teacher for fifteen years at a university in Turkey. His research interests include language teacher and learner identity, language planning and policies, social justice in ELT, multicultural education, second language teacher training, and qualitative research in education. He has presented his research in several national and international conferences. At the moment, he is working on receiving qualitative research and social justice certificates alongside his dissertation. He is married with a son.

Ufuk Keles

Conor McKeon is a M.A. candidate in Spanish, with a concentration in Second Language Acquisition, in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Marquette University. His research interests include second language acquisition, pragmatics, implicit and explicit learning, and bi/multilingualism. He is currently working on two research projects involving L2 pragmatic development in study abroad context (Spain and Latin America). He was also a member of the GSC lunch event planning sub-committee for AAAL 2019 in Atlanta. 

Conor McKeon

Jackie Ridley is a doctoral candidate in the Foreign, Second and Multilingual Language Education program at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on the language and literacy practices of young refugees, an interest born from her experience as an elementary English as a Second Language teacher in Northeast Ohio and overseas in Thai-Burmese refugee camps. Jackie is currently working on her dissertation study, which examines how refugee and immigrant children develop and use English language and literacy at an afterschool book club. She is involved in local and national advocacy efforts to support English learners and has presented at professional development workshops, teacher in-service trainings, and academic conferences on best practices for supporting these students. When she’s not PhD-ing, Jackie can be found drinking too much caffeine, spending time outside, and laughing loudly with family and friends. She welcomes correspondence at ridley.33@osu.edu. 

Jackie Ridley

Tyler True is a Ph.D. candidate in applied linguistics and a Presidential Fellow at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ. Following work as an EFL instructor in Korea and Egypt, he completed an M.A.T. and worked as a community-based ESL teacher. His interests in tasks and Task-Based Language Teaching, pragmatics, Cognitive Linguistics, and most recently corpus linguistics led to his dissertation focus on police-citizen interactions as a register. He enjoys the vibrant academic culture of NAU’s English Department. Tyler has served on a university honor council for academic integrity, a committee to nominate a young alumni university trustee, a student library advisory committee, and a faculty LGBTQIA commission. As a Ph.D. student, he drew on student organization leadership experience to found his university’s first LGBTQ+ graduate student group. He was also a member of the GSC lunch event planning sub-committee for AAAL 2019 in Atlanta.

Tyler True

Zhongfeng Tian is a Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum and Instruction at Boston College, USA. His research and teaching interests include bi/multilingualism, bilingual education, translanguaging, TESOL, teacher education, and culturally sustaining pedagogies. He was a former English and Mandarin teacher in China, Cambodia, and the United States. He has published articles in the TESOL Bilingual-Multilingual Education Interest Section and Journal of Language and Education. He has also co-edited a special issue entitled “Positive Synergies: Translanguaging and Critical Theories in Education” with Holly Link for the Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts journal. Currently he is co-editing two books (one is entitled “Envisioning TESOL through a Translanguaging Lens: Global Perspectives” with Springer and the other “At the Crossroads of English-medium Instruction and Translanguaging: Global Perspectives” with Multilingual Matters).

Zhongfeng Tian

Zhenjie Weng is a doctoral student at the Ohio State University in the Foreign, Second, and Multilingual Language Education program in the Department of Teaching and Learning.  Her research interests include second language writing, critical reading, teacher identity, teacher agency, and technology use in educating ESL/EFL students with disabilities. 

Zhenjie Weng