Small Grants | Esperantic Studies Foundation – Small research grants in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, particularly as they relate to interlinguistics, linguistic justice, intercultural communication, Esperanto, and related phenomena.

1 July 2024

The Esperantic Studies Foundation (ESF) awarded Marjorie Boulton Fellowships in 2024 to:
- Hiba Ibrahim, York University.
- Vito Miao, Northern Arizona University.

Hiba Ibrahim is a PhD Candidate in applied linguistics at York University. Her doctoral research explores intercultural competence (IC) experiences of university-level English language learners in lingua franca virtual exchange between Canada and Jordan. Through her research, Hiba hopes to enrich current epistemological beliefs about IC in virtual exchange research and practice with further learners’ perspectives and experiences of culture and intercultural competence in this media. Hiba’s other research interests include language, culture, and identity and technology-mediated language learning.

Hiba is a Palestinian Jordanian who grew up in Amman, Jordan. She earned her BA in English language and literature in 2009 from the University of Jordan and her MA in Education in 2018 from University College London. As an academic and educator of language, Hiba spent the last 16+ years working and researching intercultural competence and global education in a variety of contexts including host and refugee communities in Jordan. She has also worked as a curriculum developer and teacher trainer in the fields of online education and virtual exchange in the Middle East and North Africa regions and North America. In addition to her research, Hiba runs different roles through which she contributes to promoting decolonial approaches and social justice in technology-mediated language learning and IC research and practice. She also served as a Fulbright visiting Arabic language instructor at Baldwin Wallace University in 2013.

Yongzhi Miao (Vito Miao) received a bachelor’s degree in advanced translation studies from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies where he spent a year abroad studying literature at University of California, Berkeley. He then completed his master’s degree in applied linguistics and second language acquisition from University of Oxford. Vito is currently a fourth-year PhD candidate in applied linguistics in the English department at Northern Arizona University.

His research interests include applied linguistics (e.g., listening/speaking, Global Englishes, TESOL), social psychology (e.g., attitude formation and change), and social justice (e.g., implementing educational interventions to promote social justice). His work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as TESOL Quarterly, Language Testing, System, Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, and Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.

He has given many conference presentations, including an invited panel talk at the TESOL International Convention & Expo 2024 on Global Englishes and the English classroom. His work has been externally acknowledged by TESOL as the recipient of the TESOL Leadership Mentoring Program Award and by the System journal as a Finalist for the 2023 System Early Career Researcher Award. He is extremely grateful to have been awarded the Marjorie Boulton Fellowship to support his PhD dissertation entitled Investigating the effect of social psychology and Global Englishes interventions on listener perception and comprehension of Global Englishes varieties.

The Boulton Fellowships support research in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, particularly as they relate to interlinguistics, linguistic justice, intercultural communication, Esperanto, and related phenomena. They were created in honor of the legacy of the late Marjorie Boulton, a prolific author of plays, poems, and prose in Esperanto, as well as the leading biographer in English of L. L. Zamenhof. Previous Fellowship recipients include postdoctoral researchers Edwin Micheilsen (now at the University of Hong Kong) and Guilherme Fians (currently a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of St. Andrews), Magdalena Madany-Saa, who recently defended her PhD at Pennsylvania State University and Cecilia Gialdini, a postdoctoral researcher at Ulster University. More information on past recipients.

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