About
Waqar Ali Shah is a critical applied linguistics scholar from Pakistan.
He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Applied linguistics at the Center for Applied Language Studies (CALS), University of Jyväskylä, Finland. His doctoral dissertation focuses on discursive normativities and ruptures in ELT pedagogy and textbooks in addition to offering insights into diversifying critical discourse studies (CDS) from a southern perspective. Professionally, he is working as a lecturer at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan.
Academic achievements:
Waqar Ali Shah is presently a doctoral researcher at the Center for Applied Language Studies (CALS), University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He holds his Bachelor of Studies (BS) (University of Sindh, 2012) and Master of Studies (MS) (Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, 2016) in Applied Linguistics from Pakistan. Waqar Ali Shah speaks three languages: Sindhi as a native, Urdu as a national language of Pakistan and English as an international lingua franca/academica. Waqar Ali Shah basically hails from a small village namely ‘Sita Village’ located in district Dadu, Sindh province of Pakistan and migrated to Hyderabad city of Pakistan in 2007.
Professionally, he started his teaching career at Sukkur IBA Community College, Pakistan in 2013 followed by his visiting lectureship at University of Sindh (Pakistan) during the years 2015-16. Since 2016, he has been working as a full-time lecturer at Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan. During his PhD, he has also taught courses on ‘Discourse Studies’ arranged by Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Jyväskylä, Finland (2022, 2023). As a young researcher, he has successfully published in top-tier international journals, including TESOL Quarterly, Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), Journal of Multicultural Discourses, Linguistics & Education, Accountability in research, Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, Language, Culture & Curriculum, Pedagogy, Culture & Society and others. He has been a visiting fellow at Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research (2022), University of Valencia (UV), Spain supported by the Erasmus+ FORTHEM Alliance program (2023) and Penn State University, USA (2024 under the supervision of Suresh Canagarajah at Penn State University, USA.
Research
Waqar Ali Shah’s doctoral research contributes to Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) as a broader field. He examines how school textbooks and curricula embody conflicting discourses that shape learners’ contested subject positions in language classes. In addition, he also explores teachers’ engagement with the learners and teaching materials in socially and epistemologically diverse classrooms. This leads his to understand teacher agency as well as academic conformity in educational spaces, more specifically in second/foreign language education. He believes in a theoretical dialogue between the Southern and Northern traditions in Critical Discourse Studies drawing on Marxist-based CDA, post-structuralism, southern feminism, and decolonial scholarship. He is interested in a range of topics, such as constitution of national identities, Otherisation, gendered subjectivities, coloniality, neoliberalism, and religious discourses in textbooks, curricula and language education.
In addition to his doctoral research, he has worked on various critical issues in language education, more particularly critical language pedagogy, colonial and neoliberal influences on language education, such as outcome-based education, and how global ELT programs perpetuate colonial and neoliberal logics through English language teaching (ELT), translanguaging, and issues in higher education. Waqar Ali Shah has been a reviewer for several peer-reviewed international and local journals, including Applied Linguistics (Oxford), TESOL Quarterly (Wiley), Linguistics and Education (Elsevier), Research Evaluation (Oxford), Pedagogy, Culture and Society (Taylor and Francis), BMC Medical Education (Springer Nature), Accountability in Research (Taylor and Francis), International Journal of Educational Research Open (Elsevier), Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies (Finland), Ikala – Magazine of language and culture , Contemporary Journal of Poetics (Pakistan) and Sindh Journal of Linguistics (Pakistan). Moreover, he has an editorial secretary of Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies (Finland) since January 2023.
In addition, he has supervised several master’s theses on critical issues in applied linguistics, more particularly related to critical language pedagogy, neoliberal interventions in language textbooks, and others.