Alan Cienki - professor of Language Use & Cognition and English Linguistics
Alan Cienki (PhD, Brown University, USA) is professor of Language Use & Cognition and English linguistics in the Faculty of Humanities at VU Amsterdam and is personnel manager of ALP-English. He has taught BA and MA courses in English language and communication at the VU since 2006 as well as courses for the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (LOT). Before that, he worked at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, where he co-founded and directed the Program in Linguistics.
His research is based in cognitive linguistics and focusses on issues of what language use reveals about processes of conceptualization, with special attention to the use of metaphor and grammatical constructions from the perspectives of comparative and contrastive linguistics. Alan is director of the MA specialization at the VU in Multimodal Communication.
Gea Dreschler - assistant professor of English Linguistics and director
Gea Dreschler works as an assistant professor of English Linguistics in the Faculty of Humanities at VU Amsterdam and is director of the ALP Programme Committee. As programme manager, she is responsible for the English courses that the ALP offers as well as the Writing Centre. Gea received her PhD from Radboud University Nijmegen in 2015 and has extensive experience in teaching grammar and writing to students from a range of disciplines. She also has experience with non-directive coaching of students. She is a co-author of ALP's feedback website for English, ELS-online.
Gea’s research focuses on language change in English, both historical developments and more recent changes. She also does research on academic English and the teaching of academic writing, where her interests are in English as a lingua franca in academic contexts, as well as increasing the effectiveness of feedback on written work by students.
Margreet Onrust - Lecturer and course developer for Academic Dutch
Margreet Onrust was Senior Lecturer in Language and Communication in the Faculty of Humanities at VU Amsterdam until June 2018, and has since worked as a lecturer, project supervisor and curriculum developer at the ALP. She has taught Dutch writing skills at the VU since 1990, to students in Humanities and other faculties, and has developed courses in communicative skills for various faculties of the VU and the University of Amsterdam. Margreet is author and co-author of the Academic Skills Workbank and of various books on style and writing: Formuleren [‘Formulating’] (1993), Helder Schrijven [‘Writing clearly’] (1994) en Vermijd de naamwoordstijl! Over de houdbaarheid van een schrijfadvies [‘Avoid nominal style! On the viability of writing advice’] (2013).
Margreet does research into the effects that different formulations of the same message have on the quality of a text. For the ALP, together with Nel de Jong, she is conducting research into the nature of the problems that occur in the written (academic) Dutch of various groups of students. These groups consist of students with a range of language abilities, from Dutch native speakers to learners of Dutch as a second language. Using the results of this research, the feedback for these groups will be tailored to their needs.
Camille Welie - Lecturer and course developer for Academic Dutch
Camille Welie works at VU-NT2 as Coordinator of VU-NT2 Professional and Research since 2021. VU-NT2 Professional deals with the training of NT2 teachers; VU-NT2 Research deals with (second) language acquisition, language management and language didactics. Camille previously worked at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam as a senior lecturer in Language Didactics. His teaching was mainly in the field of (second) language learning, linguistics and research supervision of bachelor and master theses. Furthermore, Camille coordinated several research projects in the field of academic vocabulary, academic writing skills and language learning strategies.
Laura Rupp - Senior lecturer in English Linguistics
Laura Rupp is associate professor of English Linguistics. Her teaching and research expertise is in Global English, grammatical language variation and change, and English pronunciation. She was awarded the VU Teaching Award for the quality of her teaching. Laura Rupp is author of the books Uitspraakgids Engels voor Professionals (2013) and Pronunciation Matters (2014, with Rias van den Doel). In 2010 she organized the symposium ‘Accents of English’, which generated widespread publicity.
In 2017 she received a grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science for the development of an English Pronunciation in a Global World MOOC . The MOOC runs twice a year on the online Future Learn platform and attracts approximately 10,000 participants from all over the world.
Abby Gambrel - Lecturer in Academic English
Abby Gambrel came to the VU from the United States, where she taught academic writing, creative writing, and English as a Second Language for over a decade. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the University of California and a Master-level TOEFL certification from the University of Wisconsin. Abby provides various ALP courses for Social Science students in the Science and Social Science faculties and is also involved in the English Minor and in the VASVU program. She especially enjoys classrooms with students from a wide array of language backgrounds.
In addition to teaching, Abby has acted as program and content developer for a new academic writing program at Cardinal Stritch University in the United States. In addition, she has worked on the editorial staff of several literary and academic journals and as a private tutor and writing coach. Abby is a published poet, playwright, and essayist.
Jens Branum - Lecturer in Academic English
Jens Branum works as a lecturer of academic English in the ALP. He studied English Language and Linguistics at the University of the West of England, and completed a master’s degree in Language and Communication at the University of Leiden. From 2014-2017 he worked as a language teacher at the universities Ritsumeikan, Mukogawa and Osaka Seikei in Japan. He then moved back to Europe and has taught a range of academic writing, exam preparation and ESL classes in the UK, Spain and the Netherlands.
Jens also works as a freelance language editor for both academic and business publications. In terms of research, he is particularly interested in persuasion, and has carried out research on the effects of speech rate on the persuasiveness of native and non-native speakers of English. He has also published research on the language of newspapers and the media.
Anna Martonfi - Lecturer in Academic English
Anna Martonfi joined the ALP in early 2020 and also works as a freelance lecturer teaching academic English at the Academisch Talencentrum at Universiteit Leiden, having moved from the United Kingdom to the Netherlands in 2019. She completed MA degrees in English Language and Literature and in Film Studies at Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, Budapest in 2009, and a PhD at the University of East Anglia at the School of Art, Media and American Studies in 2017.
She taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the University of East Anglia in Film, Television and Media Studies, and her research interests include examining translated audio-visual materials; and transnational aspects of film, television and radio comedy. Aside from her academic work, Anna has also worked as a translator from Hungarian and French to English since 2008, working on academic texts, as well as on documentary films.
Ursula Caci - Lecturer in Academic English
Ursula Caci has always been interested in language and how it can be used to communicate ideas and to express opinions and emotions in a variety of ways. She first studied German and English literature and linguistics in Switzerland and Sweden, and then obtained a PhD in American literature at Basel University in Switzerland. During her PhD studies, she spent a year in the US at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she had to adapt to different styles of teaching, learning, and writing. In Switzerland, she taught English as a second language to university students with various backgrounds, and since her relocation to the Netherlands in 2018, she has been a tutor for Academic Reading and Writing. Before joining the team at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Ursula tutored students at the Leiden University Medical Center, taught courses for Bachelor students of International Studies and Urban Studies and PhD candidates at Leiden University, gave a pre-departure course for Indonesian students who want to study in the Netherlands at the Erasmus Training Center in Jakarta, and taught academic writing skills to first year students at the Amsterdam University College.
Ruby Westerhof - Student Assistant
As a student assistant for the ALP, Ruby Westerhof is primarily involved in various communicative, financial, and administrative tasks. She manages communication among different parties, including students, PhD candidates, and teachers.
After completing a bachelor's degree in Film and Literature Studies, Ruby is currently pursuing the Writing track in her master's program in Communication and Information Sciences. She is deeply interested in the various effects that subtle nuances in language can produce. In addition, she has taken multiple creative writing courses and enjoys writing not only academic but a diverse range of texts.