Our Team
Core Lab Members
Prof. Nate Ming Curran
Research Interests: Intercultural Communication, Gig Economy, Cosmopolitanism, Motivations for Language Learning
Broadly speaking, my current research is focused on three areas: 1) language teaching in the gig economy; 2) intercultural communication and identity; and 3) AI-generated discourse and popular discourse about AI. My work is situated at the intersection of applied linguistics, media studies, and cultural studies. I am actively recruiting PhD students interested in the topics above.
Dr. Joanna Chen
Research Interests: Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Branding, Persuasion, Business Communication, Professional Communication, AI-assisted Language Learning
Joanna Zhuoan Chen is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English and Communication at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research spans several intersecting fields including marketing, applied linguistics, and Conceptual Metaphor Theory, looking at consumer response to figurative text structure.
Dr. Lucas John Peltonen
lucas.peltonen@connect.polyu.hk
Research Interests: Applied Linguistics, Professional communication, English language teaching, Transcultural Communication, Business English, Pedagogy, Curriculum Analysis
My research focuses on business professionals using English as a business lingua franca (BELF) for their transnational communication, which requires linguacultural competence (LCC). In this study, a novel conceptual framework, the LCC framework, was developed to address the linguacultural competence of BELF learners and users. Adopting an experimental mixed methods intervention design, quantitative and qualitative data was collected from two groups of job-experienced Chinese professionals who use English for work: a control group receiving instruction on an existing business English (BE) textbook unit and an experimental group exposed to an adapted version of the unit specifically targeting two LCCs. It is hoped that this investigation provides insight into how to develop BE curricula to prepare learners for transcultural communication in the workplace, ideally contributing to more efficient professional communication and leading to socioeconomic improvement regionally and globally.
Wang Jinyan Stephy
Research Interests: Teacher identity, social media communication, platformization of language education, Gen-AI and language education
Jinyan (Stephy) Wang is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Humanities at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include language teacher identity, social media communication, intercultural communication, and the platformization of language education. She is also interested in the intersection of language education and Gen-AI. Her work appears in TESOL Quarterly, Applied Linguistics Review and Asian Englishes.
Phoebe Liao
Research Interests: Intercultural Communication, Digital Identity
15 years of 'teaching' – still nervous every time. Officially an early-career researcher (let’s just smile and move on). Fueled by boba milk tea. At home: proud caretaker of a little witch. In life: a cozy, introverted, slightly lazy middle-aged lady. My research is slow, my heart is full.
Gu Beiwei Lisa
beiwei-lisa.gu@connect.polyu.hk
Research Interests: Language Teacher Identity, Teacher Emotion, English Tutor, Shadow Education
She is a PhD student in the Department of English and Communication at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research focuses on English language tutoring, shadow education, and teacher identity development, with a particular interest in how tutors navigate their professional roles and identities in the era of AI.
Wang Ziyue Ivy
Research Interests: Gender and Sexuality, Digital Communication, Online Language Teaching, Visual Semiotics
Miss Wang Ziyue Ivy is an incoming PhD student at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She holds a MPhil from the National University of Singapore. Her current research interests include 1) language, gender, and sexuality; 2) new media and digital communication; 3) online language teaching; and 4) visual semiotics.
Zeng Wenjing
Research Interests: Online language teaching; Language and identity; Platformization; Intersectionality
I have been working in our lab since graduating from PolyU in 2024. My research focuses on online language teaching, teacher identity, and platform-mediated work. I am particularly interested in how individuals construct and negotiate their identities across different social contexts. More specifically, I study the platformization of language teaching and the experiences of online language tutors in the gig economy, with a focus on the inequalities shaped by intersectional identities. Beyond research, I am drawn to realist literature and film, and I enjoy being close to people, pets, and nature.
Affiliated Researchers
Prof. Hernan Galperin
Research Interests: Civic Engagement and Social Justice, Science, Technology and Innovation, Computation and Informatics, Policy and Law
Hernan Galperin is an internationally recognized expert on Internet policy and digital inequality. His research uses surveys, field experiments and other quantitative methods to understand the determinants of broadband adoption and use, and how these are linked to the mechanisms of social stratification. He is the author of four books and director of ARNIC at USC Annenberg.
Prof. Kathleen Ahrens
Research Interests: Conceptual and Critical Metaphor Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, Language and Politics, Language and Creativity, Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Understanding lexical meaning, including evaluative meaning in context and the lexical processing of meaning in the brain, has been the driving impetus behind much of my work in language and cognition. Her recent research has focused on corpora-based analyses, looking at structural conceptual choices made by political entities.
Prof. Christopher Jenks
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, Intercultural Communication, Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Anthropology, Narrative and Discourse
Christopher Jenks has worked across six distinct geopolitical regions. He specializes in the study of language in society and is particularly interested in the political and cultural implications of the global spread of English. He is the author and editor of 12 books.
Prof. Zhen Lichen
Research Interests: Employee Communication, Technologically-mediated Communication, Quantitative Research, Computational Research
Lichen Zhen is an Assistant Professor at Abington College, Pennsylvania State University. Her current research interests center on employee communication in technologically-mediated workplaces and online professional communities. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California.
Joy Hannah Panaligan
Research Interests: Online Language Teaching, Labor in Emerging Digital Technologies
Joy Hannah Panaligan is a doctoral student at USC Annenberg. Her research concerns online language teaching and labor in emerging digital landscapes. Her research has been published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics and Language & Communication.
Chen Huahua
huahua2004.chen@connect.polyu.hk
Research Interests: Appraisal, Attitude, Finance, Discourse analysis
CHEN Huahua is an incoming student at the Department of Statistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts with a dual focus on Linguistics and Data Sciences from Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Zhu Wenxi Cora
Research Interests: Corpus Linguistics, Language and Identity, Digital Health Discourse, Sociolinguistics
Cora Zhu Wenxi is an undergraduate researcher at the Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research applies corpus linguistics and computational methods to explore identity constructions within digital spaces.