It is official! The Department of Applied Linguistics is thrilled to welcome an accomplished and brilliant sociolinguist, an amazing educator, and a lovely colleague to the Department starting in Fall 2023. Congratulations Dr. Jennifer Sclafani on your appointment as tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics at UMass Boston!

Dr. Sclafani’s research on the language of Donald Trump has been published as a book, Talking Donald Trump: A Sociolinguistic Study of Style, Metadiscourse, and Political Identity (Routledge, 2017), and her analyses of US presidential politics have been featured in news outlets including The Washington Post, Scientific American, CNN Politics, BBC Radio 4, PBS News Hour, CBC Radio, and The Guardian, among others. Her research has also appeared in academic journals, such as Language in Society and Journal of Sociolinguistics.

Currently, Dr. Sclafani is leading Justice Language Action Project that incorporates Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and critical pedagogy. This project provides professional development to K-12 teachers in Boston public schools.

Check out her website!