Christine Goh is President’s Chair Professor of Education (Linguistics & Language Education). She served for six years (2018 -2024) as the Director of the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She obtained her PhD in Linguistics at Lancaster University and studied for her MA in Applied English Linguistics at the University of Birmingham on the UK Government’s Chevening Scholarship. She received her BA (Hons) in English and Diploma in Education from the University of Malaya and is an alumna of the SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.

Scholarship and Teaching
Christine is an Applied Linguist of high international standing and impact, known particularly within the domain of second language (L2) learning, development and use. Her expertise is in second language / bilingual learners’ oracy (the interdependence and co-development of listening, speaking and thinking skills), and the role of metacognition and strategic competence in L2 learning and use. Having begun her career as a classroom teacher, Christine’s work is characterised by a strong theory-research-practice nexus that speaks to both language educators and researchers. She contributes to theory building as well as professional discourse in English language teaching, learning and assessment. For successive years, she has been cited among Stanford Top 2% Scientists for Linguistics and Languages. Her 2000 paper (GS citations over 1,500),"A cognitive perspective on language learners' comprehension problems", is the second most downloaded paper of all time in 2023 in Tier 1 applied linguistics journal, System (IF 4.9). Her co-authored book with Larry Vandergrift (2012, 2022) is considered one of the most influential books on the research and teaching of second language listening.

Christine’s portfolio of scholarly work is international and diverse, consisting of over 260 publications and presentations, mainly in the form of refereed journal papers, peer-reviewed international books and book chapters, as well as invited keynotes, lectures, seminars, panel discussions and workshops. She has produced 17 books by publishers including Cambridge University Press, Routledge Taylor & Francis, Continuum, Macmillan, Springer Nature, Longman and SEAMEO RELC). She also published more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and 54 book chapters (Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, Wiley-Blackwell, Palgrave, Multilingual Matters, Springer International, TESOL International and others). She has delivered over 50 keynote speeches, plenaries and public lectures at international platforms, spoke at over 20 panels, conducted more than 50 invited workshops and seminars, and contributed a large number of papers at peer-reviewed conferences. Her publications are important references in universities around the world. Locally, she has advised the Ministry of Education of Singapore on English language education and research. Christine has taught on and managed various undergraduate, pre-service, in-service and graduate programmes at the English Language & Literature (ELL) Academic Group. As an academic mentor, she has supervised the research of 35 Masters and PhD students to completion. She was an editor of two Routledge education journals: Asia Pacific Journal of Education and Pedagogies, and currently sits on the boards of several journals and book series. She was the guest editor of five journal special issues. In recent years, Christine also began working on the teaching and learning of Chinese as a second language and will continue to publish in this area.

Leadership and Service
During her term as the NIE Director, Christine led faculty and staff towards achieving NIE’s vision of Leading the Future of Education and carrying out the mission of Inspiring Learning, Transforming Teaching and Advancing Research. She steered NIE towards achieving the NIE 2022 strategic goal of 'A Future-Ready NIE' by strengthening the foundations of innovative education and research programmes, local and international partnerships and networks, and building an NIE culture that values and nurtures people to achieve professional growth and excellence. She also laid strong foundations for the NIE Strategic Vision 2025 (‘NIE 2025’), building on NIE's accomplishments of 'NIE 2022', with the theme, ‘A Future-ready NIE: Transformation, Growth and Sustainability’. She began an ambitious campus refresh plan in 2023 to enhance NIE's infrastructure as well as formal and informal learning spaces to leverage technology in delivering the NIE 4-Life learning philosophy of life-long, life-deep, life-wide and life-wise learning for students, faculty, staff and alumni.

Christine ensured that NIE, a multi-disciplinary university institute of education, was always relevant to Singapore’s education and with global impact. During her tenure as NIE Director, she set in motion the NIE AI for Education initiative that saw NIE collaborating with internal and external partners to leverage AI for teaching, research and administrative processes. With her vast experience in leading one of the top education institutions in the world, Christine is a frequent speaker on international platforms on research and best practices in pre- and in-service teacher learning across their career, as well as new perspectives on education and learning for the future. One of her current recent projects examines the construct of future-readiness from the lenses of international education leaders and their institutional practices.

Christine guided NIE’s efforts in carving a unique identity as an autonomous institute of NTU by leveraging the University’s strengths as a top global research university while contributing NIE’s distinctive capabilities to the University in education, research, innovation and culture-building. Christine previously served as a Co-Lead for the NTU 2025 Research Brain and Learning Research cluster, a member of the NTU 2025 Education workstream, ExCo member for NTU's Social Science and Humanities Research fund, a University Senator and a member of the NTU Advisory Board. She continues to take on various mentoring roles in NIE, NTU and beyond.

In another previously held appointment as the NIE Dean of Graduate Studies and Professional Learning (2014 - 2018), Christine led NIE’s strategic initiatives for teacher continuing education through in-service and graduate programmes and established local and international partnership programmes. She strengthened the quality of graduate research supervision and examination through enhanced academic processes, and the articulation of attributes and competencies developed through an NIE NTU graduate education. To support graduate students’ learning experiences, Christine established the NIE Graduate Research & Academic Development (GRAD) Centre, oversaw the provision of the Graduate Student Lounge and the HD Connect Portal, and expanded student study spaces. Most recently, as NIE Director, Christine established three key NIE centres as part of NIE's Learning Initiatives for the Future of Education (LIFE @NIE SG): Centre for Science of Learning in Education (SoLEC), Centre for Assessment and Evaluation, as well as, jointly with MOE Singapore, the Singapore Centre for Character & Citizenship Education. She also refreshed the Sustainability Learning Lab, positioning it as a key lever in sustainability education for Singapore.

A Personal Note
Christine aims to continue mentoring early career researchers and new academic leaders. She enjoys conversations, music of diverse genres, local food, novels and short stories, biographies, detective drama, podcasts and radio broadcasts, as well as drawing with colour pencils. She is curious about the ideas and experiences of other people and aims to learn something new each week. Christine spends her weekends mostly with her family and their two cats, walking along the beautiful Rail Corridor (without the cats!) and working on her portfolio of journal and book manuscripts.