Sandra Maritza – Applied Linguistics & Communication @ Newcastle University

Dr Alina Schartner receives prestigious award in Bangkok

Bangkok award

Alina Schartner has been awarded the highly prestigious James J. Bradac Prize, which is awarded biannually by the International Association of Language & Social Psychology, and recognises early career excellence in the field of language and social psychology by a scholar.

Alina was given the award at the International Conference on Language and Social Psychology in Bangkok in June for her collective research to date. Alina will receive funds to enable attendance at the next International Conference on Language and Social Psychology (in this case Edmonton, Canada, in 2018), and will give an invited plenary address.

ALC PhD students present their research at ‘Sociolinguistics Symposium 21’ in Murcia, Spain.

Last June, I visited University of Murcia in Murcia, Spain to present my analysis in the conference, “Sociolinguistics Symposium 21”. Sociolinguistics Symposium is one of the biggest international conferences on language in society, and over a thousand delegates from various disciplines in sociolinguistics presented their interesting studies this year. I gave a presentation entitled “Marriage immigrants in South Korea: A CA perspective on situated identities and multimodality in interview accounts” on 15^th, June. Also my colleague, Kirsty Blewitt (3^rd year PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics) presented her paper entitled, “Exploring interactions between the state and the individual in legal settings” on the same day. We both enjoyed thought-provoking discussion in the conference, as well as the great weather and atmosphere in the city!

About the blogger

This post written by Yoonjoo Cho who is a 3^rd year PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University.

Strong ALC presence at the 15th International Conference on Language and Social Psychology

Applied Linguistics and Communication @ Newcastle was represented by two staff members and two PhD students at the 15th International Conference on Language and Social Psychology (ICLASP) which was held from 22-25 June at the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce in Bangkok, Thailand.

Alina Schartner and Tony Young convened a symposium entitled ‘The internationalising university – an intercultural endeavour?’ which featured contributions from colleagues in the United States and Hong Kong. Alina and Tony’s full paper has recently been published online.

They also presented as part of a symposium on health communication, reporting on a recent study of attitudes towards person-centred dementia care of UK and Malaysian medical students.

Jaeuk Park and Fatimah Alsaadi, both PhD students in ALC, each presented their respective doctoral work. Jaeuk’s talk focused on the Korean Digital Kitchen, while Fatimah spoke about the cross-cultural adjustment of Saudi Arabian ESL students in the UK.

Braving the monsoon rains, the group also enjoyed a cruise on the Chao Praya river, taking in the views of the temples and palaces of Bangkok. Korp Kun Ka, Thailand!

‘Intercultural Communication and Engineering Education’ – ALC research trip to Tokyo

Narrowly missing the cherry blossom season, Tony Young, Alina Schartner and Adam Brandt visited the University of Tokyo in March. The research trip was linked to a collaborative project funded by the NU Internationalisation Strategic Fund. For the past year, the ALC team have been working with Yu Maemura (Tokyo University) and Mike Handford (Cardiff University) on a mixed-method needs analysis to explore how engineering students and staff in both locations approach intercultural communication.

Despite significant jet-leg, the ALC team conducted a focus group with international engineering students at Tokyo University and gave two presentations to two very different audiences. One for professional engineers, reporting on the findings from the needs analysis, and one for Tokyo University staff on the internationalisation of UK higher education. Both talks were well-received!

The team are now writing up their research findings for publication later in the year.