St Cross College Alumnus, Kevin Tai (MSc Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition, 2018) recently won the Early Career Award granted by the Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong in recognition of his outstanding research and education plan submitted to the Early Career Scheme (ECS) 2023/24.
The ECS supports independent research for Assistant Professors or equivalent within three years of appointment. Out of 525 applications from all University Grants Committee (UGC) funded universities, only 7 early-career scholars received RGC Early Career Awards. The funded project, "The Affordance of an Emotionally Safe Translanguaging Space for Supporting Hong Kong Ethnic Minority Students in Managing Second Language Classroom Anxiety," secured over HKD$898,200, receiving an "excellent" rating with a full score of 5.0 from the Research Grants Council (RGC) Psychology and Linguistics Panel.
Professor Kevin W. H. Tai holds the position of Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy Education at The University of Hong Kong, and he is additionally appointed as an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Education at University College London (UCL). He serves in editorial capacities for esteemed journals, such as the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism and The Language Learning Journal. With a PhD in Applied Linguistics from UCL and a strong academic background, his research encompasses a broad range of topics, including language education policy, translanguaging in multilingual contexts, classroom discourse, and qualitative research methods.
Heartiest congratulations Kevin!