The Applied Linguistics Department is having an extremely productive spring: presenting and attending conferences such as AAAL 2024, TESOL 2024, and AERA 2024 and inviting guest speakers to UMass Boston. Part of this initiative was a talk and a workshop by Prof. Tricia Kress from Molloy College on “Research as Epistemology: Tapping into Multiple Ways of Knowing with Innovative Methods” where she discussed qualitative methodological approaches to research and shared projects she has conducted or overseen.

Prof. Kress started her workshop by making space to know each other and having conversations of Critical Pedagogy & Postformalism for Authentic Inquiry and demystifying the myth of positivism. After her presentation, the doctoral students of the Applied Linguistics department were immersed in expanding knowledge through embodied experience where Prof. Kress invited us to explore three experiences that included the excerpts of her research articles, music, artwork, books, and meaningful objects such as cicadas, Pink Floyd T-shirt, prisms, grading books, and pictures from her jogging trail. Having experienced this workshop helped us to see how critical pedagogy and epistemology can have and should have multiple ways of knowing with Innovative Methods where we step away from the positivist paradigm. By the end of the workshop, all of us reflected on our learning experiences and had fruitful discussions on how academic and research work can support a change in the world.