Murray, Nathaniel T. | Faculty
Ph.D., Lecturer III in Technical Communication, College of Engineering
310 Gorguze Family Laboratory
About Nathaniel
Nathaniel is a Lecturer III in Technical Communication in the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering. His areas of teaching and research include user experience (UX) design and usability in the writing process. After starting his career as a crime analyst for the State of Massachusetts, he spent eight years teaching English in Taiwan and Mainland China. Teaching positions included a college of foreign affairs in Beijing, a business English consulting firm in Taipei, and the U of M-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute. He conducted his doctoral fieldwork in China, on the teaching of academic and scientific writing in Chinese universities.
Nate is on the editorial board of New Horizons of Educational Research, and has published in Linguistics and Education and the Chinese Journal of Second Language Writing. He won the 2023 SJTU First-Class Undergraduate Course Teaching Award for VG100 Introduction to Engineering, as well as the 2022 Reader’s Choice Award from Shanghai Education Press for a textbook he co-edited on process writing.
Outside academia, Nate won two Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing. He is of half-Dominican descent, and speaks fluent Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. He has also trained Krav Maga and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Education
Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction, University of Florida
M.Sc., International and European Politics, University of Edinburgh
B.A., Music, College of the Holy Cross
Selected Conference Presentations
June 16, 2024 – Artificial Intelligence for Education Innovation Conference at Zhejiang University [Hangzhou, China]: Using Generative AI to Assist in the Development of Instructional Materials (in Mandarin)
March 25, 2021 – Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) International Convention [Online]: Translanguaging and Process Writing-Based Language Instruction
March 6, 2021 – Writing Research Across Borders (WRAB) [Online]: Teacher Education for Academic English Writing in the Chinese Context: A Case Study
November 16, 2018 – National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) [Houston, TX]: Teacher Education for Diverse Student Populations: A Case Study
March 26, 2018 – American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) [Chicago, IL]: Non-Native English-Speaking Teachers in US-Based Language Teacher Education Programs: A Case Study of Chinese College English Professors
Selected Publications
Murray, N. T. (2023). Language education policies on Taiwan: A case of comparative colonialism and discourse power. New Horizons of Educational Research, 3(1), 39-56.
Murray, N. T., Fu, D., Dawayangzong, S., & Deng, L. (2022). Translanguaging and process writing theories of the intervention. Chinese Journal of Second Language Writing, 4, 7-24.
Assistant editor, The Handbook of Guiding Students to Become Real Writers, Shanghai Education Press, 2021.
Fang, Z., Cao, P., & Murray, N. (2020). Language and meaning-making: Register choices in seventh- and ninth-grade students’ factual writing. Linguistics and Education, 56, 1-12.