Citizenship

Academic citizenship involves more than research and teaching — it includes the ongoing work of sustaining and improving the institutions and communities we are part of. This page summarises my contributions in two areas: engagement within the university and engagement with the broader external academic community.

External engagement

Conference roles

I am an active contributor to the organisation of international academic conferences, particularly in the areas of natural language processing, educational technology, and artificial intelligence. Over the years I have served in a variety of roles — including program committee member, track chair, reviewer, and co-organiser of special sessions — across conferences held in Asia, Europe, and beyond. Recent examples include serving as program chair for an Asia-Pacific education technology conference, track chair for a special session on AI in education at an international embedded systems symposium, and as a reviewer and scientific committee member for several annual international conferences.

Journal editing and reviewing

I have contributed to the peer review and editorial infrastructure of the field across a wide range of journals spanning language learning, educational technology, natural language processing, and related disciplines. I serve as associate editor of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Teaching and Learning, and have served as academic editor of PLoS ONE and as guest editor of a special issue of Big Data and Cognitive Computing on natural language processing and event extraction. I am a member of the reviewer boards of several open-access journals.

My Web of Science peer review record shows over 200 verified journal article reviews, placing me in the 99th percentile for reviews completed. I was one of two recipients of the Languages 2023 Outstanding Reviewer Award.

Open-access resources

I am committed to open access and open learning. The pedagogic tools and open-access courses I develop are freely available to anyone. These include NLP tools for error detection, tense identification, question generation, and rhetorical move visualisation, as well as courses covering topics such as research writing, authorship analysis, expert systems, and language learning technology. I view this as a form of scholarly contribution to the wider community beyond my home institution.

Engagement within the university

Committee and working group service

In my previous post, I was a member of the faculty assembly. I served on a range of university standing committees and working groups, including committees related to curriculum development, faculty development, public relations, library services, and the university's ICST programme. I have also contributed to working groups on curriculum and learning management systems at the centre level, and have served as reviewer and referee for graduate school presentations.

Laboratory direction and student mentoring

From 2017 to 2026, I directed the Texts and Tools (TNT) Lab at the University of Aizu, where I supervised and mentored graduate and undergraduate students working on projects at the intersection of natural language processing and educational technology. I have also served as a freshman class mentor, providing pastoral and academic support to students in their first year at the university.

Course coordination

Previously, I coordinated core and elective language and computer science courses, supporting students across the university in developing their academic writing and research communication skills. This coordination role involves curriculum design, quality assurance, and collaboration with colleagues across departments.