SESP Faculty

Wan Shun Eva Lam

Faculty Profile

Eva Lam specializes in the area of language, literacy, and diversity in education. She works at the intersection of literacy studies and applied linguistics in studying multilingual practices, digital literacies, narratives, and expansive forms of learning in transnational cultural and political contexts. Her ethnographic work has explored the digital media practices of youth of migrant backgrounds to understand these practices within larger contexts of transnational movements, social networks and identities, and flows of media content and artifacts.

With colleagues in education and journalism, she has engaged in design and research of multimedia storytelling and documentary making, particularly exploring how young people draw from diverse knowledge and representational resources in telling stories on migration. The broader goal of her research program is to contribute to societal education that mobilizes linguistic and cultural diversity as critical resources for promoting students’ academic, social, and political learning in an intercultural world.

She was a recipient of the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Post-doctoral Fellowship (2006-2008). She has served on the editorial boards of Reading Research Quarterly, Research in the Teaching of English, English Teaching: Practice & Critique, L2 Journal, TESOL Quarterly, Language Learning and Technology, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Journal of Applied Language Studies, and Chinese Journal of Communication. She is area editor of the Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics volume on literacy, and has served as Associate Editor of AERA Open and Cognition and Instruction. In 2011 she was given the Mid-Career Award by American Educational Research Association’s Special Interest Group for Second Language Research. She has served as mentor and advisory board member of NCTE’s Cultivating New Voices among Scholars of Color fellowship program from 2014-2022, and mentor of the Literacy Research Association STAR early career fellowship since 2022.

Some Current Projects:

Literacy and New Communication Technologies in Contexts of Transnational Migration 

Adopting a comparative case study approach and using both ethnographic and survey methods, this study explores the role of new media technologies in the lives of immigrant youth as they develop social relationships and engage with information sources that transcend geographical and national borders. A growing body of research in education has attended to the border-crossing literacy practices of transnational migrants and highlighted the importance of attending to the network configurations of youths’ transnational relationships to understand how they afford particular resources for learning and development (e.g., De Hann et al., 2014; Lam & Smirnov, 2017). We conducted a media survey with 292 youth of Mexican and Chinese descent who are immigrants or children of immigrants. We found that transnational communication was positively related to the youths’ sense of social connectedness (Cingel et al., 2019). From a series of focus groups with survey participants, we recruited nineteen youth to participate in the observational part of our study which took place in the youths’ homes. As part of our ongoing analysis, we explore how the young people create spatial and temporal configurations in their digital media practices that situate them as actors within diverse geographies and relational histories (Lam & Christiansen, 2022). We draw from the findings of the study to engage in discussion and recommendation for the role of transborder and transnational literacies in supporting immigrant young people’s learning and development. This study has received funding from the National Science Foundation program in Science, Technology and Society.

Multimodal Storytelling for Learning Within and Across Communities

Our work on multimodal storytelling brings together inquiries of multilingual and multimodal literacies, media production, and civic and political engagement. These include collaboration with colleagues across the fields of education and journalism, and working with young people in schools and community settings (e.g., Lam et al., 2021; Smirnov & Lam, 2019). In our media making project with youth telling stories on migration, we explore how youth relate their personal and community experiences to multiple societal contexts and policy contestations in their video stories. We propose that the ability to represent multiple historical contexts across societies and spatial boundaries, and to relate oneself to these contexts is important in creating more complex narratives on migration and other societal issues. We are interested in how educational practices in schools and community settings can support young people to create new narratives of migration and challenge exclusionary narratives through the use of diverse modalities, media and genres. Such educational experiences can serve to challenge nation-state boundaries in U.S. education, honor the epistemic resources of migrant and multilingual youth, reimagine the social and pedagogical arrangements of learning, and support young people in engaging within and across communities. This work has been supported by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, SESP Venture Research Fund, and the Spencer Foundation. We  document our current work on migration storytelling on this webpage https://www.migrationstorytelling.blog/

Multilingualism and cultural diversity in education, digital literacy and learning in new media environments, multilingual and multimodal literacy, language and identity, learning in transnational cultural and political contexts.

• 2021 – NCTE Alan C. Purves Award for research article judged as most likely to impact educational practice
• 2020 – Literacy Research Association Area Chair Award for conference symposium
• 2018 – Fellow, ASCEND A Faculty Excellence Initiative
• 2016 – Carl A. Grant Scholar
• 2011 – Mid-Career Award by American Educational Research Association’s Special Interest Group for Second Language Research

Lam, Wan Shun Eva and Ron Darvin (eds.). (forthcoming 2025). Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics section on Literacy (2nd Edition). Wiley Blackwell. (General Editor: Carol Chapelle)

Lam, Wan Shun Eva and Jue Wu (2024). Chronotopes of transnational literacies: How youth live and imagine social worlds in their digital media practices. Reading Research Quarterly. (Open access link: http://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.577)

Lam, Wan Shun Eva and M. Sidury Christiansen (2022). Transnational Mexican Youth Negotiating Languages, Identities, and Cultures Online: A Chronotopic Lens. TESOL Quarterly. (Open access link: http://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.3145)

Shrodes, Addie, Jolie Matthews and Wan Shun Eva Lam (2021). Enacting Resistance to Intersecting Oppressions through Satirical Digital Writing on LGBTQ+ YouTube. In B. J. Guzzetti (Ed.) Genders, Cultures and Literacies: Understanding Intersecting Identities. New York: Routledge.

Lam, Wan Shun Eva, Natalia Smirnov, Amy Chang, Matthew Easterday, Enid Rosario-Ramos and Jack Doppelt (2021). Multimodal Voicing and Scale-Making in a Youth-Produced Video Documentary on Immigration. Research in the Teaching of English, 55(4), 340-368. (Lam et al. RTE 2021)

Cingel, Drew, Alexis Lauricella, Wan Shun Eva Lam, Ellen Wartella, and P. Zitlali Morales (2019). Online Communication Patterns of Chinese and Mexican Adolescents Living in the United States. International Journal of Communication, 13: 116-135.
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Smirnov, Natalia and Wan Shun Eva Lam (2019). “Presenting Our Perspective”: Recontextualizing Youths’ Experiences of Hypercriminalization through Media Production. Written Communication, 36(2): 296-344.
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Chang, Amy and Wan Shun Eva Lam. (2018). Exploring Ideological Becoming: Documentary Practices as Internally Persuasive Discourse. Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences, ICLS 2018: Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age, Vol. 3, p. 1655-1656.

Lam, Wan Shun Eva and Natalia Smirnov (2017). Identity in Mediated Contexts of Transnationalism and Mobility. In Steven Thorne and Stephen May (eds.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Volume 9: Language, Education, and Technology Springer.
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Smirnov, Natalia, Gulnaz Saiyed, Matthew Easterday and Wan Shun Eva Lam (2017). Journalism as Model for Civic and Information Literacies. Cognition and Instruction.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2014). Literacy and Capital in Immigrant Youths’ Online Networks Across Countries. Learning, Media and Technology.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2013). Multilingual Practices in Transnational Digital Contexts. TESOL Quarterly.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva (December, 2012). What immigrant students can teach us about new media literacy. Phi Delta Kappan.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva (ed.) (November, 2012). Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics section on Literacy. Wiley Blackwell.

Lam, Wan Shun Eva and Doris Warriner (2012). Transnationalism and Literacy: Investigating the Mobility of People, Languages, Texts, and Practices in Contexts of Migration. Reading Research Quarterly, 47(2): 191-215.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva and Enid Rosario-Ramos (2009). Multilingual Literacies in Transnational Digitally-Mediated Contexts: An Exploratory Study of Immigrant Teens in the U.S.. Language and Education, 23(2): 171-190.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2009). Multiliteracies on Instant Messaging in Negotiating Local, Translocal, and Transnational Affiliations: A Case of an Adolescent Immigrant. Reading Research Quarterly, 44(4): 377-397.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2009). Second Language Literacy and the Design of the Self in Computer Assisted Language Learning: Critical Concepts in Linguistics Routledge.

Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2009). Literacy and Learning Across Transnational Online Spaces. E-learning and Digital Media, 6(4): 303‑324.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2008). Digital Networks and Multiliteracies in Negotiating Local and Translocal Affiliations Among Youth Migrants. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Language, Education, and Diversity.

Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2008). Second Language Literacy and the Design of the Self. In J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear & D. Leu (eds.), Handbook of research on new literacies. Erlbaum.

Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2007). Language Socialization in Online Communities. In Patricia Duff and Nancy Hornberger (eds.), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, Volume 8: Language Socialization Springer/Kluwer.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2006). Re-envisioning Language, Literacy, and the Immigrant Subject in New Mediascapes. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 1(3): 171-195.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2006). Culture and Learning in the Context of Globalization: Research Directions. Review of Research in Education, Vol. 30: 213-237.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2004). Second Language Socialization in a Bilingual Chat Room: Global and Local Considerations. Language Learning and Technology, 8 (3): 44-65.

Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2004). Border Discourses and Identities in Transnational Youth Culture. In Jabari Mahiri (ed.), What They Don’t Learn In School: Literacy in the Lives of Urban Youth. New York: Peter Lang Publishers.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva and Claire Kramsch (2003). The Ecology of an SLA Community in Computer-Mediated Environments. In Leather, J. & J. van Dam (eds.), Ecology of Language Acquisition. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Publishers.
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Thorne, Barrie, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Wan Shun Eva Lam, and Anna Eunhee Chee (2003). Raising Children-and Growing Up-in Transnational Contexts: Comparative Perspectives on Generation and Gender. In Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette (ed.), Gender and US Immigration: Contemporary Trends. Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich, Barrie Thorne, Anna Eunhee Chee, and Wan Shun Eva Lam (2001). Transnational Childhoods: The Participation of Children in the Processes of Family Migration. Social Problems 48(4): 572-591.
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Kramsch, Claire, Francine A’Ness, and Wan Shun Eva Lam (2001). Technology, Language and Literacy: The New Pedagogical Challenge. In R. De Cellia, H-J Krumm, & R. Wodak (eds.), Loss of Communication in the Information Age. Vienna, Austria: Austrian Academy of Sciences.
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Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2000). Second Language Literacy and the Design of the Self: A Case Study of a Teenager Writing on the Internet. TESOL Quarterly, 34(3): 457-483.
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Kramsch, Claire, Francine A’Ness, and Wan Shun Eva Lam (2000). Authenticity and Authorship in the Computer-Mediated Acquisition of Second Language Literacy. Language Learning and Technology, 4(2): 78-104.

Lam, Wan Shun Eva (1999). The Question of Culture in Global English Language Teaching: A Postcolonial Perspective. In Lydia H. Liu (ed.), Tokens of Exchange: Translation, Representation, and Global Circulations. Durham: Duke University Press.
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Kramsch, Claire and Wan Shun Eva Lam (1999). Textual Identities: The Importance of Being Non-native. In George Braine (ed.), Non-Native Educators in English Language Teaching. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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