Department of English and Communication

Assistant Professor

Prof. Lydia Catedral is a sociolinguist who uses ethnographically situated discourse analysis to theorise the relationship between language and space-time in the context of transnational migration. Her first project along these lines focused on the multilingualism of Uzbek immigrants to the U.S. She has published on this work in Language in Society and Journal of Sociolinguistics, and has a co-authored book on these themes titled, Chronotopes and Migration: Language, Social Imagination and Behavior. Her current research on migrant domestic workers emerges from her solidarity work with grassroots organizations led by migrant workers in and beyond Hong Kong, and their NGO partners. She has published on this work in Applied Linguistics and Language, Culture, and Society.

Department of English and Communication

Professor

Shaofeng Li is Professor of Applied Linguistics at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he conducts research and teaches courses on second language acquisition and language pedagogy. He received a PhD in Second Language Studies from Michigan State University. Prof. Li has published on a wide range of topics including task-based language teaching and learning, corrective feedback, second language writing, research methods, meta-analysis, and cognitive and affective individual difference factors such as anxiety, motivation, language aptitude, and working memory. His publications constantly appear in leading journals in the field of applied linguistics, such as Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Language Learning, Language Teaching, Language Teaching Research, Modern Language Journal, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, TESOL Quarterly, among others. He is the founding editor and editor-in-chief of Research Methods in Applied Linguistics, the first and only journal focusing exclusively on research methods in applied linguistics. He is also the book review editor of TESOL Quarterly, and the co-editor-in-chief of Digital Studies in Language and Literature. His recent book projects include a monograph on language aptitude, a monograph on cognitive assessments in second language research, a co-edited volume on individual difference factors in second language acquisition, and an edited volume on individual differences and task-based language teaching and learning. He has held university positions in the U.S., New Zealand, and China.

Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies

Research Assistant Professor

Dr Yixin Zhang holds a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics from the University of Cambridge, where she also completed an MPhil. She earned bachelor’s degrees in English Language from the University of Manchester and in English-Financial and Business Affairs from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Dr Zhang’s research focuses on emotion processing in children with autism and their families, particularly how they perceive and respond to emotional cues in speech, music, and other modalities. She is also interested in apraxia of speech, including childhood apraxia of speech, and the challenges these conditions present in language development and communication. Dr Zhang has published widely in prestigious journals such as Speech Communication, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Aphasiology and PloS One. Her recent work includes research on tonal languages, prosodic focus, and speech sound interaction in various populations, including children with autism. In 2023, she contributed a chapter on Laboratory Phonology to The Thematic Study of Modern Chinese.