January 2026
2025 was another busy year for ASHDRA with:
- research proposals submitted from 19 different countries
- a record number of new research projects funded this year
- progress on several ongoing projects
New projects
This year’s Call for Proposals attracted a good crop of applications in a fascinating range of areas and from 19 different countries across four continents! The greatest number of proposals this year came from researchers based in India and the UK.
With so much to choose from, we decided to spread this year’s funding across five very different research projects:
- Dr David Oakey and Dr Christian Jones, from the University of Liverpool in the UK, are working on an open-access, learner-led resource of spoken English aimed at adult learners of English as an additional language (EAL).
- Dr Dishari Chattaraj, at the Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, is developing a multilingual dictionary resource to support the teaching of English to the nomadic Lambani community in India.
- Dr Venny Karolina, based at Universitas Tanjungpura, West Kalimantan, Indonesia, is working on a Braille English dictionary to support visually impaired primary school students.
- Nurfitriah, studying at Coventry University in the UK, is using AI-assisted lexicography to compile specialized English resources for mining engineering students in Indonesia.
- Van An Nguyen Thi, at Hue University of Foreign Languages, Vietnam, is working with medical students to use dictionaries to create student-centred videos to support their English learning.
Ongoing and completed projects
Dai Lingzhen, based at Minnan Normal University in China, completed her two-year action research project: Improving dictionary skills of trainee teachers. Her full research report is available to download here along with a single-page summary.
Alexander Black’s research developing Zap Attack, an app that uses augmented reality to teach English to Zapotec speakers in Mexico, is complete – look out for his final report coming soon.
Ulrike Zeshan, of the University of Central Lancashire, is more than halfway through her research working with colleagues in India to develop a resource for deaf sign language users.
Alumni news
Thomai Dalpanagioti, who completed her ASHDRA-funded research in 2023, has continued to develop her interest in teaching about metaphor using FrameNet. She’s had several articles published and has presented her work at conferences in both her native Greece and in Portugal.
Aisling O’Boyle, who worked with refugee learners in Northern Ireland for her ASHDRA project in 2020, has continued to offer webinars and informal workshops for volunteers supporting low-proficiency refugee learners.
Lorna Morris, from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, presented her ASHDRA research at this year’s eLex conference (see more below) in a session entitled: Why a dedicated dictionary device is more appropriate than an app for primary school learners.
Events and publications
ASHDRA was once again part of this year’s eLex conference, in Bled, Slovenia in November. We were sponsors for the event, providing funding which included bursaries for a number of attendees, among them former ASHDRA researcher, Lorna Morris.
Michael Rundell (right) next to Lorna Morris and other ASHDRA bursary recipients at eLex
Amongst the activities of the ASHDRA panel, at the end of 2024, Hilary Nesi spoke at an ESP Conference: teaching and research in the digital era, at Xi’an Jiaotong University, with a keynote entitled Are these the dictionary’s last days? as well as at a seminar at the Education University Hong Kong.
Julie Moore presented at the TESOL France Colloquium in Paris in November 2025 with a session, Dictionaries vs AI: ELT referencing in 2025, which cited ASHDRA research on dictionary usage trends from Yan Yan Yueng and Dai Lingzhen. She’ll be taking up some of the same themes at the IATEFL Conference in April 2026 in her session Dictionaries in a crowded online space: reliability, relevance, and accessibility, on behalf of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.
Hilary, Julie and Michael Rundell have all contributed chapters on different areas of lexicography and lexicology to the forthcoming third edition of the International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics due for publication in 2026.
2026 will also see the Euralex conference, to be held in Vienna at the end of September. ASHDRA will be fully involved once again, so look out for more news nearer the time.