Teach in English or perish: a phenomenological inquiry into the lives of three EMI educators

Teaching in English Medium Instruction (EMI) programs can significantly reshape educators’ professional identities particularly when English is not their first language. This article summarizes a previously published phenomenological study with three Italian EMI educators in educational linguistics. Drawing on creative fortune lines to trace their experiences, the study showed that participants’ disciplinary field played a central role in their lived identity, intersecting with issues of language teaching and native-speakerist ideologies. The findings also revealed a heightened awareness of multilingual competence across English and other languages, which contributed to identity formation, alongside a pronounced tension between their professional selves expressed in Italian versus English. Overall, these insights highlight the complex negotiation of identity for EMI educators and shed light on broader questions of language, expertise, and legitimacy in an increasingly globalized higher education emotionscape.