Team

Our research team has included an interdisciplinary, intercultural group of scholars from across the globe: Lebanon, Iran, Vietnam, China, and the United States.

Team Members:

Hadi Banat, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Composition, University of Massachusetts–Boston.

Hadi Banat is an assistant professor of English and the Director of the English as a Second Language (ESL) program at UMass Boston. He is a co-PI of CROW, the Corpus and Repository of Writing Project (writecrow.org) and the Transculturation Pedagogical Research Group (writeic.org). He studies multilingual writing, intercultural competence assessment, infrastructure development in collaborative research teams, and writing program administration. His published works appeared in Composition Studies, TESOL Journal, Writing and Pedagogy, Communication Design Quarterly, Association of Computing Machinery, and the Modern Language Association. He won a total of $58,000 in external and internal grants/fellowships and contributed to Crow’s American Council of Learned Societies awarded grant of $150,000.

Alec Langlois, Research Assistant, University of Massachusetts–Boston

Alexander is pursuing his MA in English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and is currently working as a Research Assistant for Dr. Hadi Banat. He graduated from Rhode Island College with an BA in English and a minor in Communication in spring of 2020. Alexander intends to teach English on the high school level after earning his MA, with hopes of eventually going on to pursue a PhD. His research interests include adaptation studies, speculative fiction, and multimedia approaches to teaching literature.

Rebekah Sims, Lecturer, University of Strathclyde–Glasgow, UK

Rebekah specializes in higher education pedagogy, religious education, and provisions for writing instruction in teacher education. Currently, she is on the faculty of the University of Strathclyde Institute of Education, where she leads a long-term teacher-research project on inclusive pedagogy for academic literacies in initial teacher education. She also serves as a chaplain with the University chaplaincy and works with Glasgow-area schools to develop practitioner enquiry and students-as-researchers projects.

Phuong Tran, Assistant Professor, Institute for the Study of University Pedagogy at the University of Toronto–Mississauga

Phuong’s umbrella research focus is in second language writing. She has been conducting interdisciplinary research that incorporates second language writing into other areas such as backward design in curricular development, cross-cultural composition pedagogies, and Writing Center studies. Her work on cultural studies can be found in the edited collection Building a Community, Having a Home: A History of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Asian/Asian American Caucus (2017). At Purdue, she was an instructor of mainstream and L2-specific First Year Writing, and Professional Writing.

Alumni

Parva Panahi Lazarjani, Assistant Professor, Metropolitan State University (MN)

Parva’s academic studies are mainly focused on second language writing. Her particular areas of interest include the internationalization of writing programs, teaching writing to multilingual students, the development of linguistically and culturally responsive curricula in first-year writing programs, and the development of intercultural competence in composition courses.

Ryan Day, Student at Indiana University School of Law

Alumnus Ryan Day was an undergraduate researcher for Transculturation. He graduated from Purdue University with a degree in Civil Engineering and he is now completing law school at Indiana University. Previous research experience includes work with the University of Chicago’s Neurology Department. He enjoys scuba diving, bicycling, and traveling with his parents and younger brother Peyton.

Yiqiu Echo Yan, Doctoral student in Educational Psychology, University of Texas

Transculturation alumna Yiqiu Echo Yan was an undergraduate researcher for our team while she studied at Purdue. She is now a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, studying Educational Psychology and working in Dr. Katie Muenks’s LAMB lab. She graduated from Purdue University in May 2020, majoring in Retail Management. At Purdue, she was involved in diverse research projects, including the Closed Relationship Lab in the Psychology department. She also enjoyed singing in the Purdue University Choir. 

Advisor

Bradley Dilger, Professor of English, Purdue University

Bradley Dilger is a Professor of English at Purdue, and director of Introductory Composition at Purdue. He also is co-PI for Crow, the Corpus & Repository of Writing. His research on writing programs, networks, and transfer has been published in Computers & Composition, CCC, Writing Program Administration, and multiple edited collections. With Jeff Rice, he edited From A to <A>: Keywords of Markup, winner of the 2011 Computers & Composition book award. He is a year-round bike commuter, husband of Erin, and dad to Madelyn and Amelia.