Graduate Associate
leanna96[at]yorku.ca
Master's Student
Graduate Programme in Communication and Culture, York University
Research Keywords:
MDA; multimodality; discourse; discourse analysis; autoethnography; digital media; orientalism; postcolonialism; globalization; education; embodiment; positionality
Research Region(s):
Southeast Asia, Thailand
Research Diaspora(s):
Leanna Durdle is a master’s student in the Joint Communication and Culture program at York University. Informed by an undergraduate background in social development and education as well as professional and volunteer experience teaching ESL in northern Thailand, her research interests focus on encounters between “the West” and Thailand historically and today, especially through the lens national ESL education. She has a particular interest in how these encounters can be conceived of as embodied discourse, reflecting on the relationship between the body/experience of the farang and sociohistorical manifestations of orientalism, Thainess and neoliberalism in a globalized and media-focused context. While not fully conceptualized, she hopes to focus her master's research on “locating the farang,” and more specifically the foreign teacher, within and between these discourses and global flows through a mixed methodology drawing on multimodal discourse analysis, digital ethnography and autoethnography.