I recently presented my poster, titled Embodied activities in casual and classroom conversation, at the combined American Association of Applied Linguistics/Association Canadienne de Linguistique Appliquée in Toronto, CA. My presentation explored second language learners’ use of gesture and affect tokens (laughter, smiling, nodding, and head shaking) in formal and informal discourse.

I received wonderfully helpful feedback on my poster, met new researchers, and visited with a former colleague and a former advisor. The sessions I attended were insightful and helped me reconceptualize and reevaluate the identity-centered topics I have been contemplating for my future research at UCSB.