Ema Ushioda
Keynote Speaker
Her research interests include language, culture and identity, and particularly motivational perspectives on engaging with different languages and cultures, as well as issues of motivation and autonomy in language learning and their implications for classroom practice and teacher education. She has authored books including Teaching and Researching Motivation, with Zoltan Dornyei, and edited books including International Perspectives on Motivation. She has been working in language education and language teacher education since 1982, and has taught in Japan, Ireland and the UK. She obtained her PhD in 1996 from Trinity College, Dublin, where she also coordinated a research-and-development project to set up institution-wide language programs, and then pursued postdoctoral research funded by Atlantic Philanthropies to promote language learner autonomy in Irish secondary schools. This project involved designing and evaluating a version of the Council of Europe’s European Language Portfolio. She moved to Warwick in 2002 where she has been teaching primarily on MA and PhD courses. She became Director of Graduate Studies in 2013, before taking up the role of Director of the Centre in September 2018. Ema is the director of the Centre of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick.