Eva Alcón Soler is the current rector at Universitat Jaume I in Castelló. Prof. Alcón founded and directed the LAELA Research Group, and has been the coordinator of the MA Teaching and Acquisition of the English Language in Multilingual Contexts (MELACOM), main researcher in nine research projects, director of six doctoral theses, and director of various educational innovation projects. She has also received grants from the local government (Generalitat Valenciana) in order to complete visiting scholar stays in in other universities, such as: Language and Communication Studies Research Center (CLCS), Trinity College Dublin (2006); the Applied Linguistics Department, University of California, United States (2007); and in the University of Macquarie (Sydney). Furthermore, in 2011, she enjoyed a sabbatical in which she completed a research stay at Birbeck College (University of London).
Prof. Alcon’s principal areas of research are focused on language acquisition, especially acquisition of pragmatic competence and the effect of oral interaction in the acquisition of English in instructional contexts. She has published numerous research articles and book chapters on these topics in international publications such as Communication and Cognition, International Review of Applied Linguistics and Intercultural Pragmatics, and Spanish publications such as ATLANTIS, Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada and Revista Española de pedagogía, among others. She is also the author Bases Linguistics y Metodológicas para la Enseñanza de la Lengua Inglesa (2002), editor of Learning how to Requests in an Instrutcted Language Learning Context (Peter Lang, 2008) and co-editor of Intercultural Language Use an Language Learning (Springer, 2007), Investigating Pragmatics in Foreign language Learning, Teaching and Testing (Multilingual Matters 2008), La Universidad Multilingüe (Tecnos, 2012) and Discourse and Language Learning across L2 Instructional Settings (Rodopi, 2012). She has been invited editor of international journals on language learning and interaction (International Journal of Educational Research, 2002; International Review of Applied Linguistics, 2009) and on the development of pragmatic competence in instructional contexts (System, 2005).
Prof. Alcón has been an advisor for the following journals: Language Learning: A Journal of Research in Language Studies, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Intercultural Pragmatics; Language and Intercultural Communication, Language and Awareness, Issues in Applied Linguistics, and International Journal of Multilingualism. She has also presented research at numerous international conferences and has been an invited lecturer at both national and international universities. Prof. Alcón has occupied various managerial positions at the Universidad Jaume I: Director of the English Philology degree (1999-2001); Vice-rector of academic and student orientation (2001-2006); and Vice-rector of international relations (2006-2010). She has also collaborated in the Cátedra Unesco de Gestión y Política Universitaria for Madrid Polytechnic University, and is an assessor for ANEP and ANECA.