Anna Becker is Visiting Lecturer in the School of Education at North Dakota State University. Her scholarly expertise lies in Comparative and International Education (CIE), with particular attention to multilingualism and language policy, applied linguistics, and migration and academic mobility. Her theoretical work draws on linguistic and epistemic justice, decolonial and post-socialist epistemologies, and assemblage theory. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in educational leadership and teacher education, building on a teaching record that spans qualitative research methods, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and CIE at institutions in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, and the United States.
Her work has appeared in journals such as International Journal of Comparative Education and Development, Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education, Research in Comparative and International Education, European Education, European Journal of Education, TESOL Quarterly, Applied Linguistics, and International Journal of Multilingualism. She is author of Identity, Power, and Prestige in Switzerland's Multilingual Education (Transcript, 2023) and Language Policy and the Paradox of Multilingual Harmony in Switzerland (Palgrave Macmillan, 2026), with additional monographs under contract with Cambridge University Press, Multilingual Matters, and Oxford University Press. She co-edited (with tavis d. jules, Florin D. Salajan, and Benjamin Scherrer) Decolonial Epistemologies in Comparative and International Education: Anticipating the Cultural Turn? (Emerald, 2026).
From 2023 to 2025, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Polish Academy of Sciences, where she served as principal investigator on a Horizon Europe-funded research project on higher education, policy, and international mobility. Her research has been recognized with honors including the Comparative and International Education Society's (CIES) Elizabeth Sherman Swing Award (2023) and Innovative Curriculum Design Award (2022). She is Founder and Director of the International Scholars Alliance in Fargo, ND, serves on the Advisory Board of Comparative Education Review, and holds editorial roles as Section Editor of "Focus on Practice" at Language Awareness. She is Elected Awards Chair of the Language Issues Special Interest Group at CIES.
Areas of Study & Research
- Comparative and International Education (CIE)
- Language Policy and Multilingualism
- Applied Linguistics and Sociolinguistics
- Migration and Academic Mobility
- Soft Coloniality of English
- Decolonial and Postsocialist Epistemologies
- Epistemic Justice
- Assemblage Theory
Awards & Honors
- Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship (2023–2025) — European Commission and Polish National Science Center fellowship supporting international, interdisciplinary research
- Elizabeth Sherman Swing Award (2023) — Comparative and International Education Society, for outstanding contributions to research on language policy, multilingualism, and multiculturalism in Europe
- Swiss National Science Foundation Open-Access Publication Grant (2022) — competitive funding supporting open-access publication of dissertation
- Innovative Curriculum Design in Comparative and International Education Award (2022) — Comparative and International Education Society, for an open-access learning platform for school leaders featuring practice cases from seven countries
Links
Publications
- Becker, A. (2026). Language Policy and the Paradox of Multilingual Harmony in Switzerland. Palgrave Macmillan.
- Becker, A. (2026). Soft coloniality of English: Linguistic justice and epistemic pluralism in comparative and international education. Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education, 10(1), 1-17.
- Becker, A. (2026). From English as a lingua franca to Englishes as Linguae Harmonicae: A critical framework for ethical and relational language education. Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada, 26(1), e59747.
- Pentón Herrera, L. J., & Becker, A. (2026). The hidden curriculum of gender identity in L2 classrooms: Considerations for teachers, textbooks, and students. TESOL Quarterly, 60(1), 446-462.
- Zakharova, Y., & Becker, A. (2026). Academic mobility and identity in transition: Comparative insights from multilingual scholars across higher educational systems. International Journal of Comparative Education and Development.
- Becker, A., & Zakharova, Y. (2025). Bridging policy and training gaps: Language policy and instructor preparedness for English-medium-instruction in Polish universities. European Journal of Education, 60(4), e70305.
- Becker, A., & Salajan, F. D. (2024). Materializing global academic mobility through the eyes of program coordinators: Comparative insights from a Romanian-U.S. institutional Erasmus+ agreement. Research in Comparative and International Education, 19(4), 402-419.