My Background
I am a Professor of EFL Education with a special focus on Anglophone Literatures and Cultures , and I am located at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), Germany. My main interests in research, teaching, and teacher education include sexual and gender diversity as well as queer perspectives on ELT, and more recently, also digital teaching and learning. I am involved in several teacher education projects in Germany, and I regularly write and publish research papers and teaching materials.
https://www.uni-due.de/anglistik/applied_linguistics_didactics/merse_thorsten.php
Why Globe?
Why did you decide to become a Globe PLC mentor?
Right from the start, I was drawn to the idea of being involved in a worldwide community of professionals in ELT – and of sharing thoughts, ideas, and future directions with like-minded people. My special area of expertise is sexual and gender diversity in ELT, as well as applying queer theorizing to ELT research and practice. That’s why I felt very honoured when I was asked to represent this theme in the PLC on LGBTQIA+ Issues.
What can people expect from the LGBTQIA+ Issues PLC?
In the PLC on LGBTQIA+ Issues, the goal is to explore and engage with sexual and gender diversity, heteronormativity, and queer theorizing from various angles. We can look at curricula and coursebooks as they are used and implemented in local contexts – and in what ways they facilitate – or hinder – ‘queering ELT’. A major concern lies with designing teaching resources, classroom methodologies and tasks as transmitters of queer-informed teaching and learning, and of course to empower teachers to live up to this educational challenge. All of these issues are very often underrepresented or underresearched in ELT (with things gradually changing, of course). Therefore, a lot of mutual exchange and joint working and thinking can be done here, and this is what people joining this PLC can expect.
Why would you encourage people to join Globe?
Globe gives everyone the change to embrace new opportunities for worldwide collaboration and exchange. I am positive that Globe will become a hotspot in the global ELT community where people can meet to transform their ideas and initiatives into very concrete outputs – be that research projects, materials production, or teaching training, just to name a few.
