Honorary Professor
Dottore in Lettere & Filosofia, University of Florence
MA in Educational Management, University of Greenwich
PhD in Second Language Acquisition, University of Greenwich
Alessandro Benati is Professor and Head of the School of Education at the University College Dublin, Ireland. He has held academic positions in several British and overseas institutions. He has published ground-breaking research on the pedagogical framework called processing instruction. Alessandro has coordinated national and international high-impact research projects which have been influential in determining educational policy and had an impact in providing effective language teacher training programs. He is the author and co-author of several research monographs, peer-reviewed articles in high-ranked journals, and editor and co-editor of book series and scientific journals such as Cambridge Elements in SLA and Instructed Second Language Acquisition. He was a member of the sub-panel for Modern Languages and Linguistics for the Research Excellence Framework for England (REF 2021), and the AHRC Panel (UK).
Special Interest Groups:
Language Education
In-House Committees:
AJAL
Professional Affiliations:
Visiting Professor, Macquarie University, Australia, University of Anaheim, USA
Scientific advisor at University of Salzburg, Austria https://pibilinguals.wixsite.com/pibil3
Honorary Professor at the University of York SJ, UK
Selected Publications / Presentations:
Benati, A. (2025). The online primary and secondary transfer-of-training effects of structured input on the acquisition of English past tense and third person singular present tense markers: A self-paced reading study measuring accuracy and response time. Forthcoming in System.
VanPatten, B., Smith, M., Benati, A., (2025). Key questions in second language acquisition: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (second edition).
Benati, A. (2025). The effects of structured input on the acquisition of English passive and active constructions: Online measurements of native and non-native processing behaviours. Language Teaching Research (forthcoming).
Grants / Awards / Other Achievements:
2025-26: UCD Reclaim proposal. Doing language”: what, who and for whom? Enhancing cross-campus collaboration in language diversity research for innovation and social change.
Towards Inclusive Grammar Instruction (TIGRI): An exploratory study on the effects of Processing Instruction for learners with and without dyslexia.
Co-ordinator of New UCD Psycholinguistic Lab and Director of the PhD programme in bilingual education at University College Dublin. https://www.ucd.ie/education/research/lab/