Mentoring

BA AND MA SUPERVISION

Students seeking my supervision are expected
to align with one of my current research strands: (1) the sociolinguistics of waste; (2) language and elitism; (3) language work in the movies. These strands relate to current or recent SNSF-funded projects; see the following summaries on my website: Articulating Rubbish, Language and Elitism (see also Articulating Privilege), and Elite Creativities (see also the round-table conference Language Work in the Movies). My preferred methods are critical sociolinguistics and discourse analysis (written and/or spoken language) and social semiotics (visual communication, multimodal discourse).

PhD SUPERVISION

I'm not in the business of reproducing my own kind. The academic life is not for everyone and it is certainly not the be-all-and-end-all of life. Education and advanced learning are both a necessity and a privilege. There are so many reasons why people might choose to pursue a PhD, just as there are many career paths and life possibilities beyond its completion. My objectives in supervising doctoral candidates are pedagogical and practical: to support their intellectual and creative discoveries, to help them complete the thesis on time, and to position them for an academic career should they want one. The rest really is up to them.

Doctoral research in Switzerland, like in much of Europe, is thesis-driven and relies on students being mature, self-motivating, and well organized. Working under my supervision, students participate in my weekly Research & PhD Colloquium; they are also expected to affiliate with the Center for the Study of Language and Society (CSLS).

Please note: I have no expertise in (English) language teaching/learning and so never agree to supervise this particular type of applied linguistics work.

Current doctoral candidates

• Alessandro Pellanda (SNSF-funded)
  Thesis working title: Waste as a communicative resource in public space.
• Laura Wohlgemuth (SNSF-funded)
  Thesis working title: The discursive production of value in talk about waste.
• Yik Lam Charmaine Kong (SNSF-funded)
  Thesis working title: Social lives and social meanings in working with waste.

Former PhDs, University of Bern

• Olivia Droz-dit-Busset (SNSF-funded)
  Thesis title: Disrupting the economies of language work? Social media influencers as ‘new generation’ copywriters. 
• Lara Portmann
  Thesis title: The cultural politics of the interface: Status, power, and normativity in the language work of UX writers. 
• Cheng Xi (one-year visiting candidate from East China Normal University)
  Thesis title: Legitimation construction in discourse surrounding the China-US trade dispute: Cross-genre and cross-cultural perspectives.
• Marion Mathier
  Thesis title: Besides technology: Language and digital media in Swiss education – a critical discourse ethnography. BOOK HERE
• Vanessa Jaroski (SNSF-funded)
  Thesis title: The cultural discourses and social meanings of mobile communication. 
• Maida Kosatica
  Thesis title: The burden of “traumascapes”: Mapping the discourses of remembering in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina and beyond. BOOK HERE
• Joseph Comer
  Thesis title: Mediatizing equality: A critical discourse ethnography of global queer mobilities. BOOK HERE
• Gwynne Mapes
  Thesis title: (De)constructing distinction: Elite authenticity and class inequality in food discourse. BOOK HERE

Former PhDs, University of Washington

• Giorgia Aiello (see University of Bologna page)
  Thesis title: Visions of Europe: The semiotic production of transnational identity in contemporary European visual discourse.
• Kate Bell (see Cal State East Bay page)
  Thesis title: Celebrity as cultural authority: Media, representation and the politics of fame.
• Calla Chancellor
  Thesis title: Making it better for Queer youth: Troubling (neo)liberal rhetorics of visibility and empowerment.
• Irina Gendelman (see St Martin's University page)
  Thesis title: Making space: Memory, identity and the discursive production of place in the "urban development" of Seattle's Central District.
• Jamie Moshin
  Thesis title: Old Jew, new Jew: Discourse, appropriation and Jewishness in a "post-identity" era.
• Tyler Argüello (see Cal State Sacramento page)
  Thesis title: Contagious communication: The mediatization, spatialization, and commercialization of "HIV".
• Elizabeth Scherman
  Thesis title: Delightful disruptions: Rhetorical and semiotic constructions of disability in children's cinema.