By Vy Anh Tran
Please join the College of Humanities and the Arts in welcoming Dr. Michiko Uryu to the Department of World Languages and Literatures. Born and raised in Japan, Dr. Uryu earned her master’s degree in TESOL from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from UC Berkeley. She specializes in intercultural communication, discourse analysis, and second language acquisition. Her Ph.D. dissertation, Another Thanksgiving Dinner: Language, Identity, and History in the Age of Globalization, explores the shift in intercultural communication as people become more globalized and cultures intersect more than ever before. She also co-authored an article, “Intercultural Contact, Hybridity, and Third Space,” for The Routledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication. Dr. Uryu will continue her research in language and intercultural communication here at San José State University.
Excited for her new position, she says, “I am thrilled to be at SJSU, which has a long history at the forefront of education in California.” For Dr. Uryu, San José’s multicultural environment is excellent for her as an educator. “When I stepped onto the campus, I was impressed by the diversity of the student body,” she says. “As a researcher, who is interested in trans-nationalism and cultural hybridity along with intercultural communication, I am excited by the diversity and interdisciplinary opportunities offered by SJSU.”
Dr. Uryu, as an applied linguistics scholar, hopes her teachings about languages can help students adapt to an increasingly multicultural world. With the opportunities the campus’s diversity offers, she says, “I would like to use all my knowledge and experiences to help my students achieve their goals and become a cosmopolitan of today’s globalized world.”
Welcome, Dr. Uryu!
