Leadership
Executive Committee
Officers and representatives for the organization are elected every two years at the Annual General Meeting (AGM), which is typically held at IALSP's biannual conference. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2022 elections and AGM were held virtually. The Executive Committee meets monthly or bi-monthly (as circumstances require) to address issues related to the organization and to assist in planning the organization's biannual conference.
If you have a query for a specific officer or representative, you are welcome to contact them directly. If you have a general question for the Executive Committee, please email: ialsp.exec@gmail.com.
Officers
President: Marko Dragojevic
Marko Dragojevic is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Kentucky. He studies language and interpersonal/intergroup communication. In particular, his research focuses on the communicative significance of linguistic variation – that is, differences in language use, including the use of different accents, dialects, and languages. His research tries to answer three broad questions: (1) How do we evaluate different language varieties and the speakers who use them? (2) How do those evaluations influence our own and others’ communicative behavior? (3) What are the cognitive and affective processes underlying those effects? He pursues these questions in three related lines of research: language attitudes, linguistic accommodation, and linguistic framing in persuasion. His recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Human Communication Research, Language in Society, and Journal of Health Communication.
Immediate Past President:
Jessica Gasiorek
Jessica Gasiorek is a Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Communicology Program in the School of the Communication and Information at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. She was introduced to IALSP at its 2012 conference in Leeuwarden, and then helped organize the following conference, ICLASP14, in Honolulu, HI in 2014. Her research focuses on communication processes, such as how people process and produce messages, how people adapt and adjust for one another, and how people create understanding, and the social and cognitive consequences that follow from these processes. She is also interested in the role of communication in people’s collective ideas about age and aging, and the implications this has for social dynamics, social evaluations, and people’s subjective well-being. Her published work includes both book chapters and empirical articles on perceptions of communication accommodation and nonaccommodation, understanding, and communication about age and aging.
Secretary: Fabio Fasoli
Fabio Fasoli is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Surrey, where he serves as the programme leader for the Social Psychology MSc programme. His research interests span several key areas within language and social psychology, with a particular focus on three main topics: 1) how voice is perceived as a cue of sexual orientation and the stigmatisation faced by individuals perceived as gay-sounding, 2) the impact and consequences of exposure to derogatory group labels and the psychological process of language reappropriation, and 3) the role of social media imagery and humour on users’ body image concerns. Fabio’s work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals that cover diverse disciplines such as social psychology, language and linguistics, communication, and gender studies. His research contributes to a deeper understanding of how social cues and language shape societal interactions.
Treasurer: Yan Bing Zhang
Dr. Yan Bing Zhang is a Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas. Dr. Zhang studies the ways in which cognitive schemas, societal norms and values, and media representations of groups relate to communication processes. She also studies the influence that direct, extended, or mediated intergroup and intercultural contact has on interpersonal relationships and intergroup attitudes. Her publications have appeared in some U.S. and international journals in communication and social psychology including Journal of Communication, Communication Monographs, New Media & Society, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, and Journal of Language and Social Psychology. Dr. Zhang has chaired the Communication and Aging Division of the National Communication Association, and currently serves on the editorial boards of a few communication journals. Dr. Zhang has been a member of IALSP for years.
Communications:
Rachyl Pines
Rachyl Pines is a Research Scientist and Interim Director in the Office of Patient Experience at Stanford Medicine. Rachyl completed a postdoctoral research fellowship with the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation for the Transplant Education and Resource Center (TREC) specializing in healthcare communication. She received both her MA in Communication in 2016, and her PhD in Communication in April 2020, from University of California, Santa Barbara. Rachyl has served as the lead on several multi-national research projects, helped hospital and health care systems to improve their provider-patient communication, and implemented organizational change and trainings on communication best practices. Her dissertation focused on training healthcare staff to better communicate with aggressive patients to prevent violence and improve patient experience using Communication Accommodation. At Stanford, Rachyl focuses on research to improve patient-centered care.
Publicity: Odilia Yim
Dr. Odilia Yim is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion Lab (directed by Dr. Sonia Kang) in the University of Toronto (UTM) Department of Management. She completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Ottawa, where she examined the social correlates of bilingualism, specifically how language switching relates to attitudes, cultural identity, and group solidarity. Her research focuses on the role of language in driving social psychological behaviours, such as social evaluations and language-based bias and discrimination. Odilia has centred her work among minority and marginalized populations, such as first- and second-generation immigrants from the Chinese community in Canada, with the goal to better understand the unique experiences of ethnic minorities and create identity-safe spaces within society.
[website link: www.odiliayim.com]
Regional Representatives
Africa: Elvis ResCue
Elvis ResCue (PhD) is a lecturer at the Department of English of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. He holds PhD and MA in Applied Linguistics from Aston University, Birmingham- UK, and BA degree in Linguistics with English from the University of Ghana, Legon. His research interests and expertise lie in the area of African Linguistics, Language Policy and Planning, Discourse Analysis, Language Contact, Sociolinguistics, Language and New Media, and General Linguistics. He has published on monolingual and multilingual media of instruction in multilingual contexts with a focus on Ghana in West Africa, and has also published on the use of minority languages in new media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. His publications appeared in the Ghana Journal of Linguistics, Current Issues in Language Planning, Applied Linguistics Review, Journal of Linguistics and has also published a chapter in The Routledge Handbook of African Linguistics, and other chapters published by Multilingual Matters and John Benjamins. He has served as an executive member on several international associations such as the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL), Linguistics Association of Ghana (LAG), and the BAAL Language in Africa – Special Interest Group.
Asia: Mian (James) Jia
Mian (James) Jia is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the City University of Hong Kong. His first line of research explores the persuasive effects of linguistic and normative message influence strategies on raising people's awareness of health issues in multilingual societies and across different cultures. His second line of research examines how interlocutors use linguistic politeness and other meta discourse markers to communicate social support and social influence in various interpersonal and mediated contexts. He uses methods such as experimental design, corpus analysis, content analysis, and computerized text analysis. His recent publications have appeared in journals such as Applied Linguistics, Health Communication, Lingua, Pragmatics and Society, Text & Talk, and Vaccines. His current projects are funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China and the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong SAR.
Asia: Blair Jin
Blair Ying Jin works as a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of English and Communication, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is primarily interested in health communication, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and social media discourse. She is now working on two projects: computer-mediated emotional discourse in online medical consultations and cancer care. Her published work includes empirical articles and book chapters on doctor-patient interactions, parent-child interactions, and social media discourse. Her publications have appeared in international journals on linguistics such as Applied Linguistics, Research on Language and Social Interaction, Discourse Studies, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Journal of Pragmatics, Chinese Language and Discourse, Communication & Medicine.
North America:
Katherine Collins
Katherine (Katie) A. Collins (PhD; University of Ottawa) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada, where she conducts research on the issues of language, culture, and identity. She has studied, for example, the role of linguistic bias in the transmission, maintenance, and formation of beliefs. This work has improved understanding of how cultural knowledge, like stereotypes, might become shared implicitly through interpersonal conversations. She strives to conduct research that is meaningful and relevant to socio-cultural issues. Given this and her métis ancestry, she is interested in researching these same issues, particularly identity, with Indigenous peoples in Canada.
Australia & Oceania:
Eun-Hye (Sally) Shin
Eun-Hye (Sally) Shin is a postgraduate student at Massey University, specializing in social, community, and cultural psychology. Her research focuses on migrant communities and the improvement of their experiences with economic precarity; exploring informal economies and cultural strategies used to navigate adversity. This work has garnered attention at academic institutions, with invitations to speak at the University of Auckland, Massey University, the International Indigenous Research Conference 2022 and the International Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology 2024. Alongside her research, Sally has served as a tutor, teaching psychology courses. Her academic pursuits reflect a strong dedication to education, research, and meaningful contributions to the field of psychology.
Europe: Karolina Hansen
Karolina Hansen is a professor at the Center for Research on Prejudice at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the German Language in Mannheim, Germany. She is a member of the Polish Young Academy of Sciences. She received her PhD in psychology from Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, was a research affiliate at Yale University, USA, and a visiting researcher at Cornell University, USA and at University of Bern, Switzerland. She studies topics such as language and accent attitudes, gender-neutral language, non-binary language, or linguistic purism. She uses different methods combining experiments, surveys, and qualitative data to better understand the role of language in intergroup contexts. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Psychology of Language and Communication [https://sciendo.com/journal/plc]
Europe: Anastassia Zabrodskaja
(President Elect)
Anastassia Zabrodskaja is Professor of Intercultural Communication and Head of the Communication Management Master’s programme at Tallinn University Baltic Film, Media and Arts School. She is an Executive Director of the European Masters in Intercultural Communication programme. Professor Zabrodskaja is a Management Committee Member of the COST CA21143 project "Transnational Family Dynamics in Europe" (2022-2026). Her research deals with identity, intercultural communication, code-switching and linguistic landscape. She has published an Estonian-language monograph and numerous articles on bilingualism, translanguaging and language contacts. Profile in the Estonian Research Information System: https://www.etis.ee/CV/Anastassia_Zabrodskaja/eng
Latin America: Virginia Gründler
Virginia Gründler received her Master’s degree in Cognitive Psychology and Learning from the Autonomous University of Madrid. She also holds a Specialization in Language Teaching -Spanish as a Second Language- from the University of the Republic. She is a language teacher and a teacher trainer. She has taught English as a foreign language to learners of different ages and levels as well as future teachers in different provinces in Uruguay. Virginia has also taught Spanish as a second language to migrant learners of diverse origins in the Language Policy Department of the National Administration of Public Education and at the University of the Republic. In the Language Policy Department, she has been responsible for Español L2, a national program of Spanish as a second language for non-Spanish-speaking migrant learners living in Uruguay. Her main research interests are in the fields of psychology, language learning, motivation, and identity.
Student Representatives
Student Representative: Ivy Xiaoyan Wu
Ivy Xiaoyan Wu is a PhD candidate with the Department of English and Communication at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her PhD thesis is positioned at the intersection of the social psychology of language and cross-cultural psychology and investigates the role of language and communication in Mainland Chinese students’ cross-cultural adaptation to Hong Kong. Ivy takes an intergroup approach to both second language acquisition and health communication. She focuses on both practitioner-patient and practitioner-practitioner communication, and has also researched into end-of-life communication between care workers and their service users.
Student Representative: Komalpreet Kaur
Komalpreet Kaur is currently a PhD candidate with the Department of Psychology at Monash University Malaysia. Her research focuses on the intersection of language and social psychology, specifically examining the perception of English accents in Malaysia and their potential impact on employment opportunities. Komal’s work aims to contribute to a better understanding of accent-based bias and the unique challenges faced by individuals from diverse linguistic backgrounds in the Malaysian job market.
Past Presidents
1997-2000 - Peter Robinson
2000-2002 - Howie Giles
2002-2004 - Cindy Gallois
2004-2006 - Sik Hung Ng
2006-2008 - Richard Clément
2008-2010 - Jon Nussbaum
2010-2012 - Itesh Sachdev
2012-2014 - Bernadette Watson
2014-2016 - Tony Young
2016-2018 - Maggie Pitts
2018-2022 - Liz Jones
2022-2024 - Jessica Gasiorek
2024-2026 - Marko Dragojevic (current president)