About the Faculty Member

Santosh Mahapatra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus. He has completed his Ph. D. in English Language Teaching at the Department of English, University of Hyderabad. Before joining BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, he taught MCA and Integrated Masters students at the University of Hyderabad and worked as a Teaching Assistant at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. His current research interests are teacher development, educational technology and educational language policy.

Educational Qualifications

• PhD in English, with Language Assessment Literacy as the area of specialization, at the University of Hyderabad (2015)
• M.Phil. in English Language Education, with English for Science and Technology as the area of specialization, at EFLU, Hyderabad (2010)  

Research Interests

The overarching aim of my research is to find feasible solutions to problems related to digital technology use, teacher development and educational language policies. I am comfortable with qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods studies.  

• Digital Technology

I'm working on how technology can be leveraged to facilitate language learning. To be specific, my focus is on tools driven by generative AI, machine learning, and natural language processing. I'm also interested in the critical dimension of digital literacy. The socioeconomic and political divide created by digital access and equity is a major concern, and critical digital literacy can help create a level playing field, at least in educational contexts.  

• Teacher Development

Currently, I'm investigating ESL/EFL teacher development on online platforms. My focus is on how professional development programmes can shape their ability to carry out formative assessments, use technology and implement pedagogic innovations. In particular, I'm interested in tracing the impact of interventions on their practices.

• Educational Language Policy

Studying educational language policies from an evidence-based perspective and working towards finding solutions to policy-related problems are close to my heart. My research focuses on the close interaction between politics and pedagogy in educational language policy-making. 

Journal Editorial Board

• Teaching in Higher Education (Q1 on SCOPUS, Taylor & Francis)

Peer Reviewing for Journals

• Teaching in Higher Education (SCOPUS/WOS)
• Frontiers in Education (SCOPUS/WOS)
• System (SCOPUS/WOS)
• Foresight (SCOPUS/WOS)
• RELC Journal (SCOPUS/WOS)
• Asia-Pacific Education Researcher (SCOPUS/WOS)
• Research in Learning Technology (SCOPUS/WOS)
• Behaviour & Information Technology (SCOPUS/WOS)
• Cogent Education (SCOPUS/WOS)
• FORTELL  (a guest editor for an issue, UGC-CARE)

Book Proposal Reviewing

• Taylor & Francis 
• Springer

Institutional Responsibilities

• Warden, Valmiki Bhavan
• In-charge of Students' Mess Council
• Member of the Vendor Management Committee (since December 26, 2023)
• SPOC for PS Division (past)
• Convener, Departmental Research Committee (two terms, past)
• Convener, Departmental Committee for Academics (one term, past)
• Member, Teaching Learning Centre (three terms, past) 
• Editorial Team Member for BITSCAN (six years, past)

Faculty-in-Charge of Student Clubs

• BITSMUN
• Grandh
• Movie Club
• RAF
• Ethos
• Toastmasters Club
• ELAS