HOLA/HELLO/OLÁ/CIAO
I am sociolinguist. Soy sociolingüísta. There are many ways to define what it means to be a sociolinguist. I usually say this - everyone, in every language and form of language, has an accent. I study how languages (mostly Spanish and English) vary across different social groups and individuals and how the variation is perceived, judged, and policed by others.
I am an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I hold a Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics as well as a Graduate Portfolio in Mexican American and Latina/o Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. My research focuses on linguistic production and perception in U.S. Latinx communities. My work is interdisciplinary, connecting sociolinguistics, bilingualism, social psychology, and, more recently, computational approaches to these areas. In my day-to-day, I direct a group of six junior researchers and currently manage a range of research projects, from large-scale surveys and qualitative interviews, to computational methods to study language perception and attitudes.
As a researcher and educator I am dedicated to making linguistic research accessible to the public, especially to the communities that often serve as the subjects of analyses. I have been fortunate to interview with public radio and local and national news outlets with the hope of reframing academic scholarship for public audiences.
I was a competitive club gymnast at the University of Texas and now I train with Flippin’ Illini! I am a strong advocate for scholar-athletes (of all levels of sport) and I believe in the benefits that athletics can bring to academic work and vice-versa.
