Biography
I was born in southeastern Poland during the first few months of martial law. Communism fell when I was 7, so I do not have many recollections of life behind the Iron Curtain. I completed my elementary education in a free and democratic Poland and started my high school education at Liceum Zeromskiego in the city of Kielce. Two years later, in 1999, I was offered an opportunity to come to the United States. With a generous support of my relatives and guidance of my fantastic teachers at Fayetteville-Manlius High School, Manlius, NY, I was able to finish my high school education quite easily. A year after my arrival, I applied and was admitted to Cornell University, in hilly and chilly but beautiful Ithaca, NY. I chose to major in psychology and history, a combination that satisfied my interests as to why people behave, think, and feel the way they do and the consequences of such factors, which create history. Feeling the homesick pull of my native Europe, I became more interested in European history and politics; I completed a concentration in Modern European Studies and continued learning of the German language, to keep connected to my European roots.
Toward the end of my undergraduate education, I decided to pursue a graduate degree in social psychology, a field that would allow me to empirically examine the issues of social justice, specifically immigration, gender, and race/ethnicity. I was fortunate to study these issues and obtain thorough training during my doctoral program at Yale University under a guidance of an expert in the field of prejudice and discrimination and an excellent mentor, Professor John Dovidio. Graduate school is not school, but five years of hard work and modest pay, however it is also a world of an intellectual curiosity and challenge, a setting where one trains to be a scientist under the smartest minds in the world, and spends days around the brightest individuals in the world, a place where one has access to incredible resources and only wishes to have more time to take advantage of them. Yet, unlike what it seems at times, graduate school does end. For me it did in May 2010, when I successfully defended my dissertation thesis: A Word Worth a Thousand Pictures: Non-Native Accents and Their Strength in Perceptions of Stigmatization, Communication Challenges, and Social Belonging.
Throughout my secondary education, I pursued part-time employment in search of additional income and experiences. During my undergraduate studies, I worked at an on-campus library, which I thoroughly enjoyed because it allowed me to learn to find information on any subject imaginable anywhere in the world. In graduate school, I was especially drawn to the applied aspects of the academic work. As a result, I joined the consulting company Organizational Design and Development Associates (ODDA). I have been working there since 2007, first as a research associate, then a junior associate, and recently as an associate. At ODDA, I have been able to apply the skills that I have acquired during undergraduate and graduate schooling to—as academics like to call it—the real world, such as research (and ability to find almost anything given enough time!), survey design, qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis, critical thinking and writing.
Working for ODDA served as an inspiration in my decision to apply my own research to the real world. I am passionate about the topic of my research, discovering what it means for non-native speakers to have an accent, but it has received little attention both in the realm of scientific research and outside of the walls of academe. This website is just one of the ways I am looking to spread knowledge to a wider audience. I have also written several academic and non-academic articles related to this topic and plan to write more. The largest part of my plan, however, is a development of an independent consulting practice in the area of accent and language management, especially in teaching how to overcome challenges of communication. I believe that in the ever-globalizing world we cannot afford to neglect the challenges that arise where a variety of cultures, languages, and accents meet in places of employment, education, leisure, and everyday activities. With the right tools and knowledge, we can turn the challenge into an advantage, to the benefit of everyone. To that goal I am planning to devote the next few years.
Academic Publications
Dovidio, J. F., Gluszek, A., John, M.-S., Ditlmann, R., & Lagunes, P. (2010). Understanding bias toward Latinos: Discrimination, dimensions of difference, and experience of exclusion. Journal of Social Issues, 66, 59-78.
Gluszek, A., & Dovidio, J. F. (2010). Speaking with a non-native accent: Perceptions of bias, communication, and belonging. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29, 224-234.
Gluszek, A., & Dovidio, J. F. (2010). The way they speak: Stigma of non-native accents in communication. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14, 214-237.
Gluszek, A., Newheiser, A.-K., & Dovidio, J. F. (in press). Social psychological orientations and accent strength. Journal of Language and Social Psychology.
General Interest Writing
Gluszek, A. (2010, Mar/Apr). Accents trump skin color: Kids choose friends whose speech sounds similar, regardless of race. Scientific American Mind.
Gluszek, A. (2009, March). Non-academic careers: Plan A, plan B, or simply curious. Association for Psychological Science Observer.
Gluszek, A. (2008, July 16). From spoiled to spoiling (Op-ed). Hartford Courant.
Lebedeva, M. & Gluszek, A. (2009, Nov/Dec). Introducing the Job Search Club. Yale Graduate School Newsletter, 12.
