Current MA & PhD Students

Leah Duncan

Leah Duncan is a part-time MA student in the Language and Literacies Education program at the University of Toronto. As an English and experiential education teacher with more than 10 years of experience, she is interested in elevating student voices in the classroom and fostering a learning environment in which her students' unique identities and multiliteracies are valued and enhanced. Her research interests include critical literacy, deficit discourse, and multimodal learning in academic secondary classrooms.

Paddy Watson

Paddy Watson is an educator, editor, coach, and writer. He is currently an MA student in the University of Toronto's CTL LLE program. He has taught in Manchester, Tokyo, and Vancouver. Paddy was the Vancouver Wave rugby team manager that won the 2021 Coastal Cup. He is interested in screenplay use in English classrooms and for English Language Learners connected to Critical Literacy approaches and frameworks. In his creative pursuits, Paddy has had several short stories published and is currently working on a novel manuscript. Contact him at paddy.watson@mail.utoronto.ca.

Riah Werner

Riah Werner is a Ph.D. candidate in Language and Literacies Education at the University of Toronto, where her research focuses on collaboratively developing arts-based language teaching pedagogies with Ivorian English teachers. She has taught and trained teachers in Cote d’Ivoire, Tanzania, Ecuador, Thailand, and South Korea and has developed curricula for community action theatre and multimodal storytelling projects. She founded TESOL’s International’s Arts and Creativity Professional Learning Network.