Hermes and Engman win prestigious publication award for ground-breaking article

Professor Mary “Fong” Hermes and alumna Dr. Mel Engman of Queens University, Belfast received the annual Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Research Article Award for their work, “Land as interlocutor: A study of Ojibwe learner language in interaction on and with naturally occurring ‘materials,’” published in the Modern Language Journal (MLJ).

The committee praised the article for its “innovative thinking,” and for “presenting a new paradigm of inquiry.” They declared the work a “clear and rigorous example of both ecological approaches and more importantly, decolonial language reclamation efforts and research approaches that also skillfully engage with dominant theoretical paradigms.”

They also noted that the findings have broad significance in the field of language education both theoretically and in terms of pedagogical practice.

Learn more about language education research in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.