As a first-generation Canadian of Polish and Australian parents, Lauren Godfrey-Smith began negotiating the notions of identity, belonging, language, and diversity from a young age. By the time she finished high school, she had lived in five cities in four countries on three continents with an accent that didn’t necessarily match her passport. To reclaim her Canadian identity, Lauren returned to Canada in 2009, learned French, and started biking in the snow. Lauren now lives in Montréal and is a PhD student in Educational Studies in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE) at the University of McGill, where she is also involved with research and teaching in various ways. She is currently working on her doctoral research project, a critical ethnography of non-classroom-based language anxiety among French as an additional language learners in Montréal. She also teaches English as a Second Language (ESL) at Cégep Vanier College in Montréal. Lauren’s research interests include: language anxiety; language & identity; ethnography; autoethnography; additional language learning; TESOL; critical sociolinguistics; language ideology.
Explore Lauren’s BILD posts here!
Belonging, Identity, Language, Diversity Research Group (BILD) 