PhD students

Mt study aims to explore the experiences and challenges faced by female professors in West Africa and the Middle East, shedding light on the unique gender-related issues within academia in these regions.

By investigating the influence of gender on academic writing, particularly in the context of West Africa and the Middle East, this research seeks to uncover how gender dynamics shape scholarly communication.

Through examining strategies employed by female academics, this study aims to reveal effective approaches for overcoming gender-based barriers, contributing to a better understanding of how women navigate their academic careers in these regions.

English Medium Instruction (EMI), defined as the use of English to teach academic subjects in contexts where English is not the majority language (Dearden, 2014; Macaro, 2018), has expanded rapidly in higher education worldwide and in Israel following the 2019 Council for Higher Education policy that requires all undergraduates to complete at least two academic courses taught in English (Council for Higher Education, 2019; Wingrove et al., 2025). Despite this expansion, there is limited empirical evidence on how EMI operates in Israeli institutions across lecturers, students, and institutional structures, and on how multilingual students manage academic writing in English in EMI courses, particularly with the rapid uptake of generative AI tools.

My PhD research addresses this gap by examining EMI through three complementary perspectives: lecturers, students, and institutions. It will (1) analyze how universities oversee, evaluate, and sustain EMI courses and programs, (2) assess lecturers’ views on EMI, and (3) study undergraduate students’ experiences of EMI in Israel.

Peng (Patrick) Zhang received his master’s degree in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) from Pennsylvania State University. Prior to joining the Technion, he taught English at Shantou University and the Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) for over eight years. Patrick believes that students learn a language best when they are given diverse opportunities and affordances to practice it, and that thoughtfully designed classroom activities are key to successful intake. His research interests include second language writing instruction, Sociocultural Theory, and Task-Based Language Teaching. His current research project focuses on authorial voice in English writing within AI-mediated environments among Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students.

AI & Higher Education