Professor Cynthia White has been Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University since 2019, and before that she served as Research Director for the College (2012-1019) and Head of the Department of Linguistics and International Languages (2008-2012). Her applied linguistics research focuses on emotion, agency and identity in discourse including in online contexts for language use and language learning. Her most recent projects focus on agency and emotion in narrative accounts of conflict and in the settlement experiences of immigrants and refuges in New Zealand. She has been member (2014- ) then chair (2018-) of the Royal Society Marsden Fund Panel for the Humanities and appointed member of the PBRF Humanities & Law Evaluation Panel 2012, reappointed 2018. In terms of governance experience she has been an elected member of Massey University Council (2010-2016) and member of the International Applied Linguistics Association (AILA) Executive Board 2017-2019.
Cynthia brings a lifelong commitment to identifying how new technologies can extend access to learning opportunities within the humanities, arts and social sciences; demonstrating the value of those opportunities in terms of the aspirations, outcomes and quality of life of individuals and communities has been central to those endeavours.
