Formal Name: Kimie Takahashi Personal Title: Dr Position: Postdoctoral fellow Qualification: BA Griffith, MA Griffith, PhD Sydney Telephone: +61 2 9850 9939 Fax: +61 2 9850 9199 Email: kimie.takahashi@mq.edu.au Location: W6C 121

Profile
Dr Kimie Takahashi is a postdoctoral fellow at the AMEP Research Centre. Originally from Japan, she migrated to Australia in 1992 and has a BA in Applied Psychology and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Griffith University, and a PhD in Education from the University of Sydney. Her doctoral thesis, a critical ethnography of Japanese women learning English in Australia, provides a fresh insight into the intricate relationship between desire, gender, and second language learning. While undertaking her doctoral research, she taught Applied Linguistics (Language and Identity) at the postgraduate level and undergraduate Japanese. In 2002 Kimie also produced a comprehensive report on Australian immigration policy, commissioned by the Japanese Ministry of Justice. 

Research interests:

• language desire: identity, power, and second language learning
• critical discourse analysis: gender, media and English language industry
• older second language learners: the case of Japanese post-war baby boomers

Thesis Title:
Language Desire: A Critical Ethnography of Japanese women Learning English in Australia (Sydney University, 2006). Read the abstract.

Selected publications:
Takahashi, K. (forthcoming). Language Desire: Gender, Sexuality and Second Language Learning. In Critical Language and Literacy Studies (Vaidehi Ramanathan, Bonny Norton and Alastair Pennycook), Multilingual Matters. Read the abstract.

Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (forthcoming). Gender, romance and sexuality in transnational and multilingual settings. In N. Coupland (Ed.), the Handbook of Language and Globalisation, Blackwell.

Piller, I., & Takahashi, K. (2006). A Passion for English: Desire and the Language Market. In A. Pavlenko (Ed.), Languages and emotions of multilingual speakers (pp. 59-83). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

Conferences

Thesis supervision:
Emily Farrell, PhD candidate (Main supervisor: Ingrid Piller)

Vera Williams Tetteh, PhD candidate (Main supervisor: Ingrid Piller)

Zhang Jie, PhD candidate (Main supervisor: Ingrid Piller)

Related news:

• Tourism project: 'The role of multilingual practices and language learning in the AUstralian tourism industry' (funded by a Macquarie Research Development Grant awarded to Ingrid Piller).
• Community Outreach
• AMEP goes international

Media:
"On a lovestruck mission to learn English" (December 1 2007), The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia. Read the article.