Jia Rong Yap

Jia Rong Yap received the Bachelor of Education (Hons.) and master’s degrees in English as a Second Language from the University of Malaya, Malaysia, and Ph.D. in literacy education, specialising in multiliteracies pedagogy from the University of Waikato, New Zealand. From 2009 to 2019, she was a Lead Academic Teacher, a Teacher Trainer, and a Deputy Principal with the Malaysian Ministry of Education. Between 2021 and 2024, she was a Research Assistant and subsequently as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the University of Waikato and Waikato Institute of Technology, New Zealand. She is currently the Centre Manager of English Language Partners Rotorua, where she supports students from migrant and refugee backgrounds in integrating into mainstream society. Her research interests include interprofessional education, systematic synthetic phonics, and multiliteracies pedagogy, with recent projects exploring digital multiliteracies and artificial intelligence (AI) in literacy education. She is a member of TESOLANZ and Applied Linguistic Aotearoa New Zealand (ALANZ)