The Irish Association for Applied Linguistics (IRRAL) Postgraduate Students Special Interest Group (PG-SIG) provides a forum for all postgraduate students in Irish universities and other parts of the world to contribute to research and discourse related to applied linguistics. The key aims of the PG-SIG are: 

• to create a common platform for all postgraduate students to network and to provide them with opportunities to discuss and debate issues around applied linguistics;  
• to inform postgraduate students of the current issues and concerns in applied linguistics and to help them share their work in a wider network by organising academic events such as conferences, workshops, round tables, symposia, webinars and so on. 
• to give visibility to postgraduate students’ contributions through the IRAAL’s newsletter, the PG-SIG’s blog, social media, and other possible means; and 
• to inform postgraduate students about academic events and other opportunities around the world. 

IRAAL PG SIG Joint Coordinators

Aishowarza Manik, Dublin City University

Shane Barry, Mary Immaculate College

Contact: irralpgsig@gmail.com

Blog Editors 

(2022-until now)

 

Past Editors (2019 to 2021)

Aishowarza Manik is a PhD student at Dublin City University (Ireland); her current project is funded by the Irish Research Council (IRC). She has obtained BA and MA degrees in Linguistics from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. After completing her graduation, she has gained more than 3 years work experience as an English language teacher and a project coordinator respectively in different institutions in Bangladesh. She has also accomplished a professional MA degree in Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (MTCSOL) from Guizhou University in China as a Chinese Government Scholarship (CGS, fully-funded) awardee. During her second MA studies, she has worked as a Chinese language instructor and interpreter at a vocational university in China. She has working experience in both academia and industry. She also has attended multiple conferences in different countries. Her primary research interest is in the area of Applied Linguistics with a specific focus on the use of technology in second language learning. Her current project is concerned with outside-classroom learning by integrating technology to develop learner agency.   

Komila Tangirova, currently a PhD student at the University of Warwick, UK, started a career of an ELT teacher in 2010, after obtaining her first MA degree at the Uzbekistan State World Languages University. Having won a Hornby Trust scholarship, she obtained her second MA degree (with a specialism of Testing and Assessment) in the UK (University of Warwick). There she acquired some experience of working in an editorial team. Following this she also joined the editorial team in NELTA (Nepal English Language Teachers Association). Komila is one of the authors of the textbook “B2Ready” and an in-service teacher training textbook “Reconceptualizing Language Teaching”. She has also established an ESP teacher community (UzTESPING) and is currently running this networking group. By now, she has won various awards and grants to run the projects initiated by her. Komila has experience of organising various teacher professional development events including conferences. Her main interests in ELT include corpus linguistics, English for Specific Purposes, second language acquisition, language testing and assessment and materials design.

Raquel Rodríguez-Fernández is a PhD candidate at NUI Galway. She holds a B.A. in Modern Languages (English), and a M.A. in Linguistics and Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language from the University of León (Spain). Her research examines the contributions of Cognitive Linguistics, and of Cognitive Grammar in particular, to Spanish language teaching and learning. She has participated in national and international conferences and has conducted a teachers’ training webinar on vocabulary and morphological acquisition. She has published on the presence of derivative morphology in current SFL (Spanish as a Foreign Language) teaching materials and the influence that students’ perceptions and beliefs play in grammar learning. Her research interests include Foreign and Second Language Learning/Acquisition, Psycholinguistics, grammar and grammar teaching, morphology, and semantics.

Sagun Shrestha holds a M.ED from Tribhuvan University, Nepal and MA in English Language Teaching (Specialism in Information and Communication Technologies) from the University of Warwick, Coventry, UK as a Hornby Scholar (2016). He has taught English language and/or applied linguistics course in Nepal, Ireland and UK, and has worked as a teacher trainer in Nepal for five years. He has served as an editor-in-chief of NELTA ELT Forum, the official ezine of Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association (NELTA). He was one of the founding editors of The Warwick ELT, the English Language Teaching (ELT) based ezine published from the University of Warwick. Currently, he is a joint coordinator of Irish Association for Applied Linguistics  Postgraduate Special Interest Group (IRAAL PG SIG). He is a PhD student at School of Applied and Intercultural Studies (SALIS), Dublin City University, Ireland.  For his PhD project, he is looking into affordances and challenges of information and communications technologies in education in crisis situations.

Maricarmen Gamero is a PhD researcher and senior graduate assistant in the Centre for Applied Linguistics and the School of Modern Languages in the University of Warwick, UK. She has worked as an online and onsite researcher, teacher trainer and language teacher for 12 years. Most of her experience has been in Venezuela, but also includes the UK and China. She hols a B.A. in Foreign Language Education with a Major in English, a MA in Educational Research, MA in Distance Education: E-Learning, and a MA in English Language Teaching (specialism in Teacher Education). She has participated as a speaker in several international conferences and has taken part as editor in NELTA (Nepal English Language Teachers Association 2091-0487) and the journal for Educational and Social Sciences (Venezuela-ISSN 1690-7647). She is the co-founder and co-convenor of the Teacher Education and Development Research Group at the Centre for Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick. Her research interest is in the area of language teacher education and video remote teaching.