Dr Chong Su Li of Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) has been awarded the prestigious Brenda Eastwood Award 2021 by the United Kingdom Literacy Association (UKLA) in recognition of her work in multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural communities.

The Brenda Eastwood Award is an annual award that is given for one’s outstanding effort in demonstrating knowledge, understanding and engagement with inclusion and diversity at local, national, and international levels.

Dr Chong is a senior lecturer at the university’s Department of Management and Humanities, Institute of Self Sustainable Building (ISB), and Head of University Social Responsibility (USR) Education Pillar.

In her nomination piece, Dr Chong shared with the judges her work both in literacy research and literacy outreach that contribute to UTP’s aim of sustaining quality education in its community. As a winner of this award, she was invited by UKLA to present her work at UKLA’s first virtual International Conference held from 2 to 4 July 2021.

“To have received such award from UKLA is deeply humbling. Winning this has meant that what we are doing for Malaysia’s educational landscape, especially to shine a light on literacy education has been duly recognised. My hope is that this win will help bring attention to the issues Malaysian children face in their literacy journeys. I receive this award on behalf of my very dedicated research team and outreach team in UTP as well as the other partner universities. UTP’s aim to champion United Nation’s Sustainable Goals, in this case, for Quality Education, will remain central to the work we do.”

Dr Chong received her Ph.D. in Education from the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research interest focuses on the intersections of Literacy and Language Education within multilingual societies and in marginalised communities. In her work, she accommodates the multiple perspectives of readers who make meaning from a range of languages, modalities and mediums. She has previously published in the field of literacy education.

This year particularly, with Routledge, she published her edited book entitled Charting an Asian Trajectory for Literacy Education: Connecting past, present and future literacies. She also published a book chapter with Bloomsbury, in the edited book entitled The Bloomsbury Handbook of Cultural Identity from Early Childhood to Early Adulthood.