Eko Widianto

Background

About Eko Widianto

I am an Indonesian language educator (BIPA) and applied linguistics researcher with more than a decade of international teaching experience in Tunisia, Vietnam, the United States, and Ireland. My long engagement with Indonesian language pedagogy has shaped my current doctoral research in Applied Linguistics at the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Galway. My PhD investigates the intersections of language, culture, ideology, and power within Indonesian as a foreign language education. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough) and broader critical applied linguistics, I examine how Indonesian language textbooks—particularly those produced in the U.S. and Indonesia—represent culture, construct narratives, and reflect geopolitical interests. My work also develops the concept of cultura franca, which theorises a universalised and diplomatically shaped version of Indonesian culture embedded in BIPA materials, especially in relation to tourism, soft power, and national branding. I serve as an Honorary Fellow Researcher at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison. As a recipient of the AIFIS–Luce Fellowship, I conducted ethnohistorical research on the development of Indonesian language teaching in the United States since the 1940s through oral history interviews and archival exploration. I am passionate about advancing Indonesian language education globally and contributing to interdisciplinary conversations on how language teaching becomes a site of cultural representation and soft-power diplomacy.