Professional Bio

Areas of Interest: Critical Discourse and Narrative Analysis; Translingual Practice; Participatory Action Research.

Lyana Sun Han Chang is a fifth year PhD candidate in Applied Linguistics at Penn State. She was born in Huacho, Peru and moved to the suburbs of Chicago at a young age. Her experiences growing up with an undocumented status motivated her to do collaborative and action-oriented research with immigrants. Her dissertation research focuses on the relationships between immigrant identities, immigrant reclaimant narratives, and mainstream discourses on immigration within the context of undocumented status. Lyana is interested in stance-taking and positioning in narratives to understand how immigrants negotiate identities and index public discourses which are often tied to the criminalization and racialization of immigrants. Her research has implications for the inclusion of narratives and identities which are often silenced and constrained by dominant discourses, and for immigration reform.

Lyana is currently developing an UNDOCU Storytelling Webinar Series for Community and Representation, funded by the GADI Graduate Voices in Diversity and Inclusion Grant and Co-sponsored by the Rock Ethics Institute and Social Sciences Research Institute. She has also been awarded a Superior Teaching and Research (Star) Award for her project to create virtual space to house diverse and minoritized immigrant-created reclaimant narratives.