Dr. Theresa Catalano serves as a Fulbright Specialist in the Department of Communication Studies at the Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia (UPI) in Bandung, West Java, from August 31-September 15, 2025. She gives lectures on critical media studies, communication science, and media and society. In her lectures, she introduces methodological/theoretical perspectives and tools from critical discourse studies, which offer profound insights into how media and communication practices are shaped by societal power structures, ideologies, and discourses. She also draws on her knowledge of social semiotics and cognitive linguistics in her talks.
In addition to the project activities with undergraduate students at UPI, she draws on her own experience and insights into the global publication landscape to assist faculty in navigating the complexities of publishing in high-impact journal. She also carries out project activities with faculty on interdisciplinary collaborations. Goals of the visit include improving research quality, promoting multidisciplinary research, and fostering internationalization while laying the groundwork for enduring partnerships between UPI and research institutions in the U.S., such as the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, through continued research collaborations, potential student exchange programs, faculty training initiatives, and visiting scholar programs.
Dr. Catalano holds a PhD in second language acquisition and teaching from the University of Arizona and is currently professor of second language education/applied linguistics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research focuses on language teacher education and migration (including intercultural education and arts integration), and the connection of language and visual communication to ideology, power and social inequality. Her 2020 book with Linda Waugh Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Studies and Beyond (Springer) introduces CDA/CDS, its important foundational concepts, theories, approaches, and trends, as well as critiques of the field and future directions. She is currently working on the Bloomsbury Handbook of Harmful Discourse, a co-edited volume with Stavros Assimakopoulos and Carmen Lee. At her university, she teaches graduate/undergraduate courses on multimodal discourse analysis, linguistics, language teaching methods, intercultural communication, and multilingualism.
Dr. Catalano is not new to working with Fulbright. In 1993, she studied in Pakistan as part of a Fulbright grant and in 2022, she participated in a Fulbright grant for teachers to study in South Korea. She has also served as academic advisor to three Fulbright doctoral students including Dr. Fathiyyah Maryufani from UPI, with whom she has collaborated on several papers and publications.
