Speakers & Panelists
Speakers
Nick Ellis
Nick Ellis (B. A. Psychology, Philosophy, and Physiology (PPP) University of Oxford, 1974; Ph. D. Cognitive Psychology University of Wales, 1978) was on the faculty at Bangor University from 1978-2004. In 2004, he joined the University of Michigan, where he is Professor of Psychology, Professor of Linguistics, and Research Scientist English Language Institute. In 1992, Ellis was visiting professor at Temple University Japan, in 2003 visiting professor at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 2011 external senior fellow at Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, and in 2016 international chair, Labex à Paris: Empirical Foundations of Linguistics. In 2019 he was awarded the Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award of the American Association of Applied Linguistics.
His research interests include first and second language acquisition, cognition, emergentism, corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics, applied linguistics, reading and spelling acquisition, and psycholinguistics. Relevant books include: Usage-based Approaches to Language Acquisition and Processing: Cognitive and Corpus Investigations of Construction Grammar (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016, with Römer and O’Donnell), Agendas for Language Learning Research (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, with Ortega and Cumming), Language as a Complex Adaptive System (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, with Larsen-Freeman), Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition (Routledge, 2008, with Robinson), Implicit and explicit learning of languages (Academic Press, 1994), and Handbook of spelling: Theory, process and intervention (Wiley, 1994, with Brown). He serves as General Editor of Language Learning.
Jonathan Brennan
Jonathan Brennan studies the mental structures and computations used to understand words and sentences, with a focus on how these processes are implemented in the brain. His research uses formal computational models of language comprehension to investigate the neural correlates of basic cognitive computations such as lexical access, syntax, and semantics with electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
He has a particular interest in experimental methods that are as natural as possible, such as having participants read or listen to a story, to focus on sentence processing as it occurs during every-day language use. Naturalistic techniques are especially suitable for the investigation of language comprehension in populations, such as children with autism spectrum disorder, for which standard experimental tasks may not be appropriate. He directs the Computational Neurolinguistics Lab at the University of Michigan.
Nia Dowell
I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Information and Academic Innovation at the University of Michigan. However, I recently accepted a tenure track Assistant Professor position at the University of California, Irvine, which will begin in the Fall. I completed my PhD at the Institute for Intelligent Systems in the University of Memphis under the advisement of Professor Arthur Graesser. My primary interests are in cognitive psychology, discourse processing, group interaction, and learning analytics. In general, my research focuses on using language and discourse to uncover the dynamics of socially significant, cognitive, and affective processes. I am currently applying computational techniques to model discourse and social dynamics in a variety of environments including small group computer-mediated collaborative learning environments, collaborative design networks, and massive open online courses (MOOCs). My research has also extended beyond the educational and learning sciences spaces and highlighted the practical applications of computational discourse science in the clinical, political and social sciences areas.
