During this interview from May 2026, Dr. Esther Oljuskin, a Writing and Rhetoric PhD graduate, discusses her dissertation Localizing Pedagogy: Inquiring into the Teaching Practices and Attitudes of First-Year Writing Instructors and Curriculum Designers.
Can you talk a little bit about your dissertation and what it was?
I was interested in how instructors that are located outside of North America and the West are able to talk about and teach writing in English to students, specifically students that are in the first years of their studies at the university level. There’s a lot of work out there on how North American and Western instructors teach writing and English writing, so I was trying to talk about [English writing instruction] with instructors in East Africa and to be very attentive to their own voices as opposed to simply talking about them.
I started the work, initially, because of an interest in building a writing center in my home country, but I ended up realizing I didn’t know much about how the teaching of writing and English in that country looked like. I decided, “Let’s ask a different question. How does it look like for instructors at the university level?”
What classes or research experiences led you to that topic and research method or approach?
I was interested in the idea of writing centers from the very beginning, having tutored in writing centers for a bit. When I came to Mason, I took classes in writing program administration to try and better appreciate and understand how writing programs, like writing centers, are administered. I also found myself curious about writing itself and how it is taught.
It was really not any one particular course that led to me asking this question. I came in already knowing what I wanted to ask about in a very general sense, and then it just got focused on through a collection of courses.
As far as methodology, I actually experimented with a method called narrative inquiry. I came across it through my own readings, but ENGH-702: Research Methods in Writing and Rhetoric with Dr. McKinley Green introduced me to methods like it.
The method of analysis that I utilized was definitely as a result of working with Dr. Susan Lawrence in ENGH-821: Writing Program Design and Administration because we learned how to do grounded theory. I was able to marry it into my methodology of narrative inquiry, which is a very flexible kind of methodology that you can attach to other methods. In the end, I came away with a thematic analysis which combined grounded theory, analytical steps, and narrative inquiry.
Switching gears and thinking generally, what is one of your proudest accomplishments from your time at Mason?
I’m very proud of the work that I was able to be a part of through my teaching assistantship and the writing and conferencing projects that I did with my colleagues along the way. When I was a teaching assistant, I didn’t stop participating in other academic and university-related projects. For instance, I supported the Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning as a graduate program assistant with Dr. Tom Polk. Then, with the composition program and Dr. Courtney Wooten, I have been part of so many projects, including building a website for instructors who teach multilingual writers as well as being part of the writing-intensive course review.
There isn’t any one thing that stands out that I’d say I’m super proud of because there’s so many things that have been extremely vital to my own development but also the work that we do for our students here.
What’s next for you now that you’ve graduated?
I’m doing a few things that are kind of different. I’m trying to stay very much in a flexible space right now and pay attention to how I can contribute academically and continue to work on my research in a space that doesn’t necessarily have to stay within the university confines. There are a few projects in the pipeline, but I don’t want to speak too much about them until they come out.
The simplest answer I can give you is that I’m definitely planning to continue doing my research and contributing to teaching our students, be that in a university setting or in a non-academic context.
Last but not least, what is something fun that you’ve done during your time in the PhD program?
For me, what has been fun and has certainly helped me to stay interested in the PhD without feeling overwhelmed is the opportunity to build relationships and connections with people that make my life fuller, including going on walks with some of the colleagues that I taught with as a teaching assistant or friends that lived close by. At the end of a long day or week I could text one of them and say, “I'm going on a walk tonight, do you want to join?” Then, that became our routine, and we would walk through the neighborhood and talk about what’s going on work wise and build friendships that outlasted the program. We contextualized our lives beyond this moment in time, which will soon pass, which has passed for me in a sense, but continues in another sense. Being able to see how friendships are built not only around the work that I do but other interests, such as walking, has been the most fun part of it.