Edwin Dartey

Hello! Welcome to my webpage. I'm Edwin Dartey, a dual-title PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University. I'm a Graduate Scholar in Residence at Penn State's Humanities Institute for Fall 2025 and a Gil Watz Graduate Dissertation Fellow in Languages and Linguistics at Penn State's Center for Language Acquisition for the 2025-2026 academic year. Previously, I held a Dissertation Fellowship at the Africana Research Center at Penn State for the 2024-2025 academic year. 

My interdisciplinary research lies at the intersection of applied linguistics, African/Africana philosophy, and postcolonial studies. My dissertation project, which has been awarded a National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations/Modern Language Journal Dissertation Writing Support Grant and a  J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Graduate School- Fox Dissertation Completion Award, is a comparative case study where I explore how societal factors such as race, class, coloniality, and indigenous knowledge systems impact Southern multilingual practices in Ghanaian elementary schools.  The project examines how African philosophical concepts can reshape the theorization and practice of multilingual education in a global Southern context. The work aims to challenge the dominance of Western paradigms in language policy and planning, proposing a shift toward community-grounded epistemologies that recognize linguistic diversity as socially embedded and pedagogically generative, particularly within educational spaces. 

I have a longstanding interest in drawing on corpus linguistics to explore second language writing and English for academic purposes, with a focus on themes such as syntactic complexity, metadiscourse studies, genre approaches in academic writing, and authorial presence in academic texts.   

I have taught at the high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels. At the undergraduate level, my teaching has included courses in academic communication, English composition, African literature and film, media literacy, and linguistics, in both Ghana and the United States.

I actively contribute to the academic community through various editorial and peer review roles. I served as a Co-editor for the Graduate Students’ Newsletter of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL). In addition, I review manuscripts for leading journals, including English for Specific Purposes, International Journal of Multilingualism and Applied Linguistics. I have also served as a conference abstract reviewer for the TESOL Graduate Student Forum. 

A central objective of my scholarly work is to explore universalized ontologies of language that render non-hegemonic linguistic practices as subordinate or peripheral. Through my research and teaching, I endeavor to advance understandings of alternative epistemologies, with a particular focus on southern and post-colonial contexts. 

To access or download a copy of my CV, please click on this link- Edwin's CV