Hanh Thi Nguyen

Hanh Thi Nguyen is a Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English and Applied Linguistics at Hawaii Pacific University, College of Liberal Arts. She earned her Ph.D. in English Language and Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and holds a B.A. from the University of Hue, Vietnam.

Her research centers on conversation analysis, interactional competence, second language acquisition, pragmatics, classroom and workplace discourse, learner identity, and Vietnamese linguistics. She explores how language learners develop communicative abilities across contexts, from classrooms to professional settings, using detailed interactional data. Her work bridges theory and pedagogy, informing language teaching and assessment practices.

Dr. Nguyen has published extensively, including books such as Developing Interactional Competence at the Workplace (2024) and Developing Interactional Competence: A Conversation Analytic Study of Patient Consultations in Pharmacy (2012), and co-edited volumes on conversation analysis and Vietnamese pragmatics. Her recent articles examine epistemic stance, language ideologies in family talk, and computer-mediated language learning, showing a growing interest in longitudinal development and multimodal interaction.

She has received numerous awards and grants, including the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Scholarship (2019), multiple Faculty Development Grants, and a 2024 U.S. Department of State grant as Principal Investigator. She has served on editorial boards for journals such as RELC Journal and TESOL International Journal.

Dr. Nguyen mentors students and collaborates widely, with frequent co-authorship with scholars like Taiane Malabarba and Minh Thi Thuy Nguyen. She teaches courses in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and language assessment. She also leads research labs and teams focused on conversation analysis and language socialization, and continues to present at major international conferences through 2025.