Mr Troy McConachy

Dr Troy McConachy is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education. His work focuses primarily on intercultural learning in educational contexts such as language education, intercultural training programs, and internationalisation efforts within higher education. Much of his work in language education has focused on how the teaching and learning of pragmatics contributes to intercultural learning. He has also sought to critique simplistic representations of cultural diversity in educational materials and propose ways that teachers can work creatively with imperfect materials. Outside of language education, his work on internationalisation of the curriculum has examined the notion of 'participation' as a cultural construct and explored the implications of how academic staff conceptualise participation for teaching and learning in internationalised classroom environments. He has also looked at how academic staff across the disciplines enact internationalisation of the curriculum at the level of learning design and what pedagogical assumptions underpin their planning.

Troy's research has been published in a wide range of international journals such as ELT Journal, Language Awareness, Journal of Pragmatics, Intercultural Education, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, the Language Learning Journal, and others. He is also founding editor of the journal Intercultural Communication Education (Castledown) and current co-editor of the series Elements in Intercultural Communication (Cambridge University Press). Troy has also recently edited a number of interdisciplinary academic books such as Negotiating Intercultural Relations: Insights from Linguistics, Psychology, and Intercultural Education (with P.R. Hinton, published by Bloomsbury), Intercultural Learning in Language Education and Beyond: Evolving Concepts, Perspectives, and Practices (with I. Golubeva & M. Wagner, published by Multilingual Matters), Teaching and Learning Second Language Pragmatics for Intercultural Understanding (With A.J Liddicoat, published by Routledge).

Prior to taking up his current post at UNSW in Aug 2024, Troy was Reader in Applied Linguistics at University of Warwick. Prior to that, he worked at language schools and universities in Japan for 14 years.