Rate My Professor Csilla Weninger

Csilla Weninger is Associate Professor and Head of the English Language and Literature Academic Group at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Trained as a sociolinguist, her research examines language in its social contexts of use along two main strands. First, she investigates how spoken, written, and visual discourse manifests, propagates, and reinforces cultural and political ideologies through detailed analysis of text and talk, with a focus on their impact on schooling via textbooks, policies, and classroom discourse. Second, she develops critical approaches to English language and literacy education, moving beyond literacy as a skill to foster engagement with texts as reflexive and affective situated social practices, including digital media literacy as a foundational skill and disposition for 21st-century education. Her theoretical framework draws from critical discourse studies, sociocultural linguistics, and critical literacy studies. Weninger earned her PhD from the University of Georgia in 2007, with a dissertation titled "Exploring Emergent Models of Personhood in U.S. Urban Revitalization through Interdiscursivity," supervised by Betsy Rymes.

Her career includes previous affiliations with Vanderbilt University and Aalborg University. Weninger has an extensive publication record, including the monograph From Language Skills to Literacy: Broadening the Scope of English Language Education through Media Literacy (Routledge, 2020); the co-edited volume Language Ideology and Education (Routledge, 2015); and peer-reviewed articles such as "Multimodality in critical language textbook analysis" (Language and Education, 2021), "Cultural learning in the EFL classroom: the role of visuals" (ELT Journal, 2017), and "Because I have my phone with me all the time: The role of multimodality in shaping reading practices" (Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2023). She serves on the editorial board of Linguistics and Education, received the NTU John Cheung Social Media Award in 2016, and has delivered keynote addresses at international conferences on topics like critical literacy and digital literacies. Her work has garnered over 1,000 citations, influencing discourse analysis and literacy education.