Penn State’s Department of Applied Linguistics continues to stand out globally, with six of its faculty members ranked among the top 2% most cited scholars in the world, according to the latest to statistics compiled by Stanford University professor John P.A. Ioannidis and available through the Elsevier Data Repository. The scholars—Suresh Canagarajah, Xiaofei Lu, James P. Lantolf, Karen E. Johnson, Matthew E. Poehner, and Tommaso M. Milani—are recognized for their groundbreaking contributions to key areas of applied linguistics, including translanguaging, corpus-based approaches to language learning, critical discourse analysis, second language acquisition, teacher education, and Vygotskian-inspired dynamic assessment.

This continued recognition highlights the department’s sustained excellence in research. The Stanford list, which evaluates scholars based on citation metrics, affirms the global relevance and impact of Penn State’s applied linguistics research.