Adelina Asmawi is an Associate Professor at the Department of Language and Literacy Education. She is also Adjunct Professor at the College of Foreign Languages, Northeast Forestry University, China and College of Women, Seiyun University.

She was the Head of Department (2018-2022) and Deputy Dean of Undergraduate Studies and the Quality Manager at the Faculty of Education, Universiti Malaya (2014-2017). She holds a PhD in Professional Development of Teachers, TESOL, and Instructional Technology from Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. She has supervised 10 PhD students to completion. 

Leadership

As then, Deputy Dean, Dr Adelina assisted and worked closely with the Dean and Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic and Internationalization) in the development, implementation and monitoring of progress of the faculty’s strategic plan particularly in relation to Undergraduate Studies. She also took responsibility for the teaching and learning portfolio for the undergraduate programmes.

As Quality Manager, Dr Adelina coordinated activities like Self Audits and Internal Audits that are required to direct and control the faculty with regard to quality. She championed and supported improvement initiatives and ensured that process owners maintain their part of the quality management system at the faculty level.

As Head of Department, she oversaw department development and growth in programmes, students, human resources, budget, research and strategic planning. 

Industry Engagement

She spent her sabbatical leave in 2017 attached to Puncak Niaga Holdings Bhd under the Strategic Resource and Public Relations Division. She worked with the team on strategic collaboration, knowledge enhancement, quality assurance as well as CSR initiatives. 

Research

As a researcher, she enjoys exploring innovations in education. 

In 2013 and 2014, she co-created the Developmental Instructional Supervision Module and co-trained teachers under the Ministry of Education’s Knowledge Transfer Programme. She has worked on a collaborative project with University of Exeter and Chulalongkorn University on creative thinking and creative teaching for higher education. Her research work in 2017 has led to the publication of an e-graphic book for research in education in 2018. She also worked on an IIRG funded, interdisciplinary research with Dentistry and Computer Science Faculties on an App to prevent smoking initiation among Malaysian children from 2019 - 2021. Concurrently, she has been researching and developing modules for 21st Century English language literacy using emerging technologies among select urban poor pupils and volunteers as an extension from her Pearl projects. In 2024, she works on an international research collaboration with researchers from World University of Bangladesh, Dhaka and University of Bengkulu, Indonesia on a South East Asian research on blended grammar instruction in higher education.

          PEARL Project

She is Founder of PEARL project (Pedagogy of English language Acquisition among uRban poor Learners) (2018), then extended to PEARL 2.0 (Lembah Subang) (2019), Pearl4PJ (Petaling jaya) (2020), Pearly Starfish (2022), Pearl 3.0 (2023), Auction-a-Pearl (2023), PEARL and Beyond (2024), PEARL Alam Shah (2024), and Pearl for Firdaus (2025). She works closely with select urban poor communities to develop the urban poor and asnaf children's English language acquisition through inventive approaches that focus on informal, fun and safe surroundings. The later projects embed digital literacy, financial literacy and STEM literacy. 

Publications

Dr. Adelina was awarded Top 10% WoS Indexed Journals Series 2024 -10 in November 2024. She actively publishes in the areas of higher education, instructional technology, creative thinking, TESOL and professional development. Her works are published in international and Malaysian journals.

She has written eight books: ‘The Art of Teaching English’ (2014), ‘Understanding Play in Children’s World’ (2014), 'The Art of Reflective Thinking' (2016), The Art of Creative Research (2017). Thesis Easy (2018) (FREE at e-sentral.com or umpress.com.my), From Me to We: Teaching Taboo Topics to Children through Spoken Word Poetry in Malaysia (2022), Revolutionizing Language Education: Multimodal Discourse Analysis and AI in the Digital 21st Century (2024) and Digital Translanguaging for Global Learners: Language Education for the 21st Century (2025).

She also wrote for Leaderonomics and was Chief Editor of the special issue journal, 'Language Education for a World on the Move' (2020), 

Awards

Dr Adelina picked up a silver and two bronze medals from the Research and Innovation Expo for her work on ‘Literacy Activities of Malaysian School Students’ and 'Interactive Whiteboard for Teaching and Learning'. She collected the Best Research Paper Award from Singaporean Global Science and Technology Forum in 2012. She positioned third at the Malaysian National Educational Blogging Competition of 2012 and received the University of Malaya Excellence in Services Award in 2015. In the same year, she co-wrote a paper which bagged the Best Paper Award defeating 50 over papers at the International Conference on Teaching and Learning, Bangkok. In 2017, her team's invention: T.O.P Module won a Silver Award by the MBOT, MHE and UMP and her invention: E-Thesis for Dummies won a Bronze Award at H-Inovasi 2017 Competition. She was awarded Best in Teaching at the 2017 University of Malaya Excellence Award and was double awarded: the GOLD Award and Special Award for Student Support for her research and product: Thesis Easy at the Liter Research Conference 2018. Dr Adelina represented University of Malaya for the prestigious 2018 National Academic Award, AAN12 (Teaching Category). She also received the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Education (ICE) in Nov 2018 and won 2nd place for her PEARL project at Community Engagement Academia Conference (PAKUM 2018) in Dec 2018. In Feb 2019, she won a Silver Medal at CITREX 2019 and in April 2019, 2 Platinum medals at the Innovation and Design Expo, UM for her PEARL framework (English language acquisition of urban poor children) and REACH framework (professional development of teachers through community engagement). She is VIWA 2019's Outstanding Woman in Humanities and Social Sciences. 2020 saw another Platinum medal on her belt from INSIDE2020 for her team's innovation 'MAID in Malaysia'- View https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b17BitsWkD0. She is recipient of Melbourne Graduate School International Alumni Award 2020 https://education.unimelb.edu.au/community/alumni/mgse-alumni-award. She was also awarded the Universiti Malaya Excellent Service Award in 2022 and Loyal Service Award in 2023. To boot, she and her PhD student won the Best Paper Award at Malaysia International Convention on Education Research and Management in 2024. 

Evaluative duties as an Academic

She is an interviewer for the Malaysian International Scholarship, Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia.

She is a programme assessor for National University of Malaysia's (UKM) Master's programmes, Malaysian Institute of Teacher Education (IPGM)'s Bachelor's programme, Kolej Universiti Poly-Tech MARA's (KUPTM)'s Bachelor's programme, MAHSA University's Diploma in TESL programme, and an External Member of the Course Advisory Committee for the Graduate Diploma programme, Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak as well as the Industry Advisor for PhD in Education programme at Open University Malaysia. 

Dr Adelina is also an external examiner for PhD theses from Taylor's University, University Science Malaysia (USM), University Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Universiti Putra Malaysia, University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD), SEGI University, Open University of Malaysia (OUM) and many more. 

Other scholarly engagements

She is an Associate Member of Akademi Professor Malaysia. She is Editor of ‘Issues in Education Journal’ and ‘Global Science and Technology Forum Journal’. She was judge for various storytelling, debate, Three Minute Thesis (3MT), public speaking, innovation, and international exchange student programme (UK-MALAYSIA University Consortium) competitions at school and varsity levels.

A passionate educator, she shares her thoughts and ideas as an invited speaker in various settings: Spore's APAIE (March 2018), Xuchang University, China (Spring, 2018), APSS (Nov 2018), TEDXUniversityofMalaya 2019, Dublin's IICE (Oct 2019), and Berlin's ICDTE 2024. She was a keynote speaker for ICOELTICS 2021, IRCW-ELS 2021, URICET 2021, ICMEIM2022, Chengdu, China 2022, ICEHoS, NTU, Singapore 2023, and ICELLIC, North Sumatera 2024. She was a Human Book for National University of Singapore's Human Library programme for student leaders in 2021, a guest lecturer for Woo Song University, Korea (2023) and Malang State University, Indonesia (2023) and a visiting academic at Medan State University (2023). She consistently writes for major newspapers and is an expert panel in the media (printed, electronic, digital), the latest being appearances on mainstream television, ASTRO Awani in July & November 2023 and May 2024 as well as on BFM 89.9 podcast in Dec 2023, March and May 2024 and Malaysia Hari Ini, TV3 in Nov 2024.

Dr. Adelina is UM karaoke champ 2018. A runner, she completes marathons from all over and as an avid Rescue scuba diver, loves being submerged in Underwater Awareness projects. She also dedicates her time to organize annual trips/deliveries to selected orphanages. She is also an active Parent Teacher Association representative for Premier schools; Sekolah Alam Shah, Putrajaya (SAS) and Sekolah Seri Puteri, Cyberjaya (SSP). 

Researcher ID: B-8137-2010

http://www.researcherid.com/rid/B-8137-2010

Orcid ID: 0000-0003-0595-2986

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0595-2986