David Hanks is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education specializing in Educational Linguistics with a concentration in International Education Development. After finishing his undergraduate studies, David began his career in education as an elementary and junior high school English teacher for a small town in Fukushima, Japan, while on the Japan Exchange & Teaching (JET) Program from 2008 to 2011. Confronted by the often incongruous relationship between English language educational policy and practice in rural Japanese public schooling, this experience was foundational in David's desire to pursue graduate study in the field of language education. After returning the United States, he began working toward his M.S.Ed. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Inspired by the collaborative interdisciplinary work of faculty and doctoral students alike, as well as the critical research produced by the division and its strong focus on and commitment to social justice, David applied to the Educational Linguistics Ph.D. program during his first semester of graduate coursework seeking to explore the sociopolitical issues of language education more deeply.

While finishing up his dissertation writing, David has worked as an Instructor at PennGSE teaching introductory courses to newly admitted graduate students, and as a TESOL practitioner consultant observing and working with novice TESOL professionals to develop their practical skills as future educators. He is currently a faculty member in the Department of Applied Linguistics at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses at the intersections of linguistics, anthropology, and education.

David is currently writing his dissertation, entitled "Eat, Pray, Love, Speak: The Commodification of Language Education for Tourism in Bali," having recently returned to the United States after completing three years of ethnographic fieldwork in Bali, Indonesia. The project comprises a multiyear ethnography of language policy in the rapidly developing tourist destination of Ubud. Focusing primarily on the largest commercial Indonesian language school in the region, David's dissertation research aims to better understand how the commodification of language education for tourist consumption participates in the mediatization, negotiation, and regulation of identities for tourists and locals alike, and what role the accelerating material changes to the wider community and Ubud's tourism economy play in this process.

In Bali, David is affiliated with the Department of Cultural Studies (Fakultas Ilmu Budaya) and Center of Excellence in Tourism (Pusat Unggulan Pariwisata) at Udayana University. His dissertation research is supported by the U.S. Department of Education through a 2018–19 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, as well as by a 2019–20 U.S. Department of State/Educational and Cultural Affairs Research Grant administered by the American Institute for Indonesian Studies (AIFIS) in partnership with the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC).

On August 29th, 2019, David was a Keynote Speaker at the 5th International Conference on Cultural Studies at Udayana University, where he gave a talk on his current research entitled "Getting More Than You Bargained For: Teaching Foreign Visitors to Bali to Haggle in the Capitalocene."

Hornberger, N. H., Anzures Tapia, A., Hanks, D. H., Kvietok Dueñas, F., & Lee, S. (2018). Ethnography of language planning and policy. Language Teaching, 51(2), 152–186. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444817000428

Hanks, D. H. (2017). Policy barriers to Ainu language revitalization in Japan: When globalization means English. Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 32(1), 91–110. https://wpel.gse.upenn.edu/s2017#hanks