Sean Hall

I am a PhD student with two primary interests: multilingual writing and digital rhetoric, with a focus on rhetoric of/with AI. I have had an interest in rhetoric and language more broadly since my undergraduate studies at Indiana University. I always enjoyed my language courses at IU the most (Persian & Russian), and combined with teaching in Ufa (Russia) after my degree, I discovered that I wanted to make my future based around languages and how they are used both in and out of the classroom. I thus enrolled in Ball State University's 3-year master's dual degree program in Linguistics & TESOL, and graduated from it in May 2023. After this, I taught English for Academic Purposes in China, where I was exposed to AI technologies in the writing classroom and quickly saw the impact these technologies were having on learners. I wanted to learn more about how AI (and other) technologies will affect writers in the future, so I applied to Purdue's Rhetoric and Composition program to explore these topics. While my background is in Applied Linguistics and I still maintain an interest in multilingual learners' writing and composition practices, I am also looking to expand into research on digital rhetoric and how AI technologies will affect writers in the future.