International Conference on Language, Culture, Technology, and Autonomy (ICLACTA) 2025

Jill Robbins, Ph.D., NML’s Vice President and Chief Technical Officer, develops online learning materials for English learners. She works with the U.S Agency for Global Media as a Language Learning Specialist. She has taught language learners and teachers in the U.S., Japan, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, and China. Her research explores language learning strategies and metacognition.

Dr. Robbins is the co-author of Integrating EFL Standards into Chinese Classroom Settings, Impact Listening 2, and The Learning Strategies Handbook. Dr. Robbins has served on the NML Board of Trustees from 2007 and helps maintain the NML website. She earned a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Georgetown University.

Dr. Usree Bhattacharya is Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia. She earned her PhD in Education from the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarship spans the fields of TESOL, critical AI, and disability studies, with a sustained focus on equity, diversity, and access in multilingual educational contexts.

As director of the Rett Lab@UGA, Dr. Bhattacharya investigates language and literacy development in individuals with Rett syndrome, a direction of work inspired by her daughter’s diagnosis in 2018. The lab advances inquiry at the intersections of disability, communication, and inclusion, with particular emphasis on how individuals with complex communication repertoires navigate meaning-making.

Building from this research, Dr. Bhattacharya examines how artificial intelligence encodes and circulates dominant narratives of disability, with attention to the ways algorithmic bias reshapes understandings of language, cognition, and lived experience. Beyond critique, she contributes to policy and advocacy efforts that advance ethical, equitable, and socially accountable uses of AI in schools and learning environments, with particular concern for marginalized learners.