Hyoun-A Joo

Hyoun-A Joo received her Ph.D. in German Applied Linguistics and Language Science from the Pennsylvania State University in 2018. Before joining the Georgia Tech faculty as assistant professor of German in the School of Modern Languages in 2020, she worked as postdoctoral GLACT fellow at Georgia Tech from 2018-2019 and as assistant professor of German and Linguistics at Furman University in Greenville, SC.

Her overarching research interests lie in bilingualism and language contact at their intersections with society and identity. Her research investigates structural properties of second language (L2) acquisition as well as pragmatic properties of L2 use by adult immigrants and heritage speaker communities. In her dissertation Clausal architecture in naturally acquired German: Korean immigrants in Germany, she worked with Korean immigrants who came to Germany in the 1960s and 70s for work purposes and had to acquire their L2 “on the fly” by living and working. She investigated their acquisition of the German clausal structure, such as the asymmetric finite verb placement. More recently, she started to study cultural and pragmatic aspects of the L2 used by first generation German immigrants in the Southeast when, for instance, denying requests or expressing politeness. Her research interests also led her to work with heritage speakers such as Mennonite heritage German speakers in Kansas and heritage Korean speakers in the metro Atlanta area.

Hyoun-A Joo is passionate about teaching and delights in communicating and working with students. She welcomes opportunities to reflect her own views and desires to challenge students to use their foreign language skills as a key to a broader and deeper understanding of oneself and the other that leads to transformed and transforming interactions with the world.