About me

I am a researcher in applied linguistics with a specialization on foreign/second language education and German language. I received my PhD in German applied linguistics with a focus on second language acquisition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and I am currently an Assistant Teaching Professor at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.

In my research and teaching, I view language education as a means to not only acquire new skills to communicate effectively and competently in personal and professional settings but also to create a critical awareness of how language as an embodied, multimodal system shapes and is shaped by different social interests, purposes, and ideologies. It is through language that we mediate knowledge, create our social worlds, and express our selves. I therefore see all education (also) as language education and language as one of the core factors that make us human. That is to say, the goals of foreign/second language education for me form part of a larger humanistic tradition in understanding how different linguistically mediated socializations shape individuals and their communities.

In my research, I aim at creating new empirical and theoretical insights into how language learners learn and use their translingual and transcultural competence to successfully engage with new communities in personal and public settings, on a personal, social, cultural, economic, and political level.

These aspects also inform my teaching in German language, applied linguistics and teacher education: My goal is to guide students to develop the linguistic and sociolinguistic competencies to become critical users of language, who are able to competently engage in discursive practices of different communities and relate linguistic practices to larger historically grown sociocultural issues.