Suresh Canagarajah is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics, English, and Asian Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He is also the Director of the Migration Studies Project, under whose auspices this Consortium is hosted. He is the former editor of TESOL Quarterly (2005-2010) and President of the American Association of Applied Linguistics (2011). 

Canagarajah had his foundational education and did his early teaching in Sri Lanka before moving to the United States. He has published in a range of disciplines, including sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, English language teaching, rhetoric and composition, and cultural studies. Decolonizing publishing and knowledge has itself been an area of his research and scholarship. His book on diversifying academic publishing, Geopolitics of Academic Writing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), won the Gary Olson Award for the best book on social and rhetorical theory from the Association for the Teachers of Advanced Composition. Writing studies is also an area of his research. His articles in the flagship journals for the communities of rhetoric and composition (i.e., College Composition and Communication) and multilingual writing (Journal of Second Language Writing) won the award for the best article in those journals for 2006 and 2015 respectively. His sociolinguistic research on English language and English teaching have won publishing awards from the humanities organization, Modern Language Association of America (MLA), for two of his books—namely, Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (Oxford University Press, 1999) and Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations (Routledge, 2013). The more specialized research organizations, the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) and British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL), have short-listed or awarded the best book prize for three of his books.  

Canagarajah has published 14 books, 82 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and 73 chapters in edited scholarly books. Five of his journal articles have been anthologized in edited collections, with one of them (the prize winning 2006 article in College Composition and Communication) republished in three different anthologies. He has guest-edited special topic issues for 9 double-blind peer-reviewed journals on chosen themes of his expertise for spotlighting emerging research topics and leveraging scholarly attention. Canagarajah’s total author citations are 27898 and his H-index is 63. For more biographical information visit: https://english.la.psu.edu/directory/asc16/