People at MLLL

Alexandre Alves Santos is a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has a B.A. in English Language and Linguistics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) and an M.A. in Hispanic Linguistics from UMass. Alexandre is interested in second language acquisition and processing, heritage languages, and language assessment. In his doctoral dissertation, he examined the correlations between oral fluency measures and vocabulary size in heritage speakers of Portuguese.

Luiz Alexandre Amaral is the Director of the Multilingualism and Language Learning Lab (Polyglot Lab). He is a Professor of Portuguese and Spanish linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the Director of the Portugeuse and Brazilian Studies Program, and the Interim Spanish Language Coordinator. His research focuses on pedagogical strategies and their facilitative effects on additional language learning, morphosyntactic acquisition in second languages, and bilingual development in minoritized communities. He works with indigenous language revitalization projects in Brazil, with a special focus on pedagogical materials and language program development. Visit his website (www.luizamaral.net) for more information about his research projects and publications.

Carla Costa is a Ph.D. student in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a B.A. in Portuguese Language and an M.A. in Linguistics from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA). Her research interests include Indigenous languages, language revitalization, and language teaching methodologies. She has worked with several native Brazilian groups in the State of Rondônia.

Carlos Flores is a Ph.D. student in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is a native speaker of Quechua from Bolivia. He comes from an expert weaving family in the village of Candelaria, Chuquisaca, Bolivia. He has a bachelor’s degree in languages, focusing on Quechua, Spanish, and English, from the San Francisco Xavier University of Chuquisaca, with undergraduate studies in Sociology from the University of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic, where he also taught Quechua. He is interested in contributing to the revitalization of the Quechua language through social media, pedagogical teaching materials, and designing experiential learning for children and adults, and he has been working on projects to teach and promote his native language, including the development of corpora, translations, and pedagogical materials. One of his publications is Bolivian Quechua Verbal Art, collected, transcribed, and translated to Spanish by him. 

Jaqueline Ionson is a Ph.D. student in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has been teaching both Portuguese and Spanish as second languages for many years. Jaqueline is originally from the State of Bahia in Brazil, and her research interests are in second and heritage language instruction and acquisition. Her dissertation project focuses on the development of written abilities in Portuguese heritage language learners.

María Teresa is a Ph.D. student in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a B.A. in Translation and Interpreting, with a focus on English, Russian, and Portuguese, as well as an M.A. in Teaching English as a Foreign Language from the University of Granada, and an M.A. in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language from the University of Antonio de Nebrija. She currently works as a Teaching Assistant for Portuguese at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and as a Spanish instructor at the International Language Institute, Northampton. Her research interests include second language acquisition, with a particular focus on Portuguese and Spanish.

Isaura de Los Santos is a PhD student in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a native speaker of Chatino from Panixtlahuaca, Oaxaca, Mexico. Her research centers on literacy development in her native language, with the aim of contributing to its revitalization. She has been developing resources for Chatino speakers, such as children’s books, reading materials, and a pedagogical grammar. Over the last 12 years, she has been teaching reading and writing in the Chatino language. Her dissertation describes a Chatino revitalization project involving children, language teachers, and elderly speakers from Panixtlahuaca that she designed and implemented. 

Marco Tulio Bittencourt holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MA in Linguistics from the University of Brasília (Brazil). He is a lecturer in Spanish at Baylor University. He studies heritage languages and morphosyntactic acquisition in second languages. He is currently working on the acquisition of derivational morphology by heritage speakers of Portuguese. 

Andie Faber is an Associate Professor of Spanish and the Spanish Language Program Coordinator in the Department of Modern Languages at Kansas State University. She teaches classes in additional language pedagogy, linguistics, and Spanish language and conducts research in bilingualism, language acquisition and maintenance, and pedagogical practices to support equity. She has a Ph.D. in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Maria Luisa Freitas is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics and a Permanent Faculty Member in the Graduate Program in Letters (PPGL) at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE). She holds both a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree in Linguistics from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). She earned a bachelor's degree and a teaching degree in Letters, with specializations in Linguistics and Portuguese, and also completed additional academic training in Anthropology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). She was a visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar). She leads the Center for Indigenous Studies at UFPE (NEI), a research group registered with Brazil’s National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). She coordinates the Linguistic Revitalization Committee and serves on the Indigenous Languages Committee of the Brazilian Linguistic Association (ABRALIN).

Using the pen name Márcio de Jagun, Márcio Dodds Righetti Mendes holds a degree in Law from Cândido Mendes University, an MA in Education, and a PhD in Philosophy from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). He completed two Postdoctoral projects: one in Religious Studies at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF) and another in Philosophy (with an emphasis on Afro-Metaphysics) at UERJ. He is a Professor of Yoruba Philosophy, Language, and Culture at UERJ (Religious Studies Program) and at the Modern Language Program at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF). He is a member of the Kékeré Research Group within UERJ's Graduate Program in Education (PROPED/UERJ). He consults for IPHAN (the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage) on including the Yoruba language in Brazil's National Linguistic Diversity Index. In 2022, he was elected a lifetime member of the Pan-American Academy of Letters and Arts (Chair No. 41, Edgar Allan Poe). He is an attorney specializing in Human Rights, with an emphasis on Religious Freedom. He is a founding member of the State Council for the Defense and Promotion of Religious Freedom. He served as Executive Coordinator for Religious Diversity in Rio de Janeiro City (2022-2025) and as State Superintendent for the Defense and Promotion of Religious Freedom in Rio de Janeiro State (2017-2021). In recognition of his work promoting religious freedom and for his cultural contributions, he was awarded the Tiradentes Medal (the highest honor granted by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Rio de Janeiro) in 2026. He published 10 books, among them Ori - A Cabeça como Divindade (2015), Yorubá - Vocabulário Temático do Candomblé (2017), Nkó Yorùbá: Gramática, Conversação e Tradução (2020), A Sala de Aula não Cabe no Mundo - Compreendendo a Nagologia Yorubá e Suas Metodologias Singulares (2021), and A Filosofia Descolonial do Candomblé Nagô (2024). 

Thaís Maíra Machado de Sá is a Brazilian linguist, researcher, and university professor specializing in Experimental Psycholinguistics and Language Studies. She has a Doctoral degree from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). She is a Professor at the Federal University of Lavras (UFLA) in the Department of Language Studies (DEL). She serves on the Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Committee of the Brazilian Linguistics Association (ABRALIN). Her research areas include experimental psycholinguistics, bilingualism and additional language ​​teaching and learning, lexical assessment, and Brazilian Sign Language (Libras). She co-authored the book Métodos Experimentais em Psicolinguística (2022). 

Isaac McAlister is a former Ph.D. student in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In his dissertation, he investigated how Portuguese native speakers acquire the present perfect in English and Spanish. He has taught Spanish, English, and Portuguese as additional languages for many years, and he enjoys learning new languages and exploring the strategies people use to learn them.

Verônica Pinheiro is a researcher, artist, educator, and doctoral candidate in Arts and Contemporary Culture at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). She coordinates the Selvagem Learning Laboratory (Laboratório de Aprendizagens Selvagem, LAS), part of the Selvagem Association – Cycle of Studies on Life. She is a member of the executive team of the Intercultural Learning Course at the Federal University of Pampa (UNIPAMPA) and is a council member of the Zero to Six Institute, advocating for early childhood. Her research focuses on the relations between art, education, territory, memory, and ancestral knowledge, with a particular interest in embodied learning, teaching processes, and Indigenous and Afro-diasporic ways of knowing. In her doctoral work, she describes the cosmopoetics of Tikmũ’ũn (Maxakali) songs, analyzing how song, image, sound, and territory constitute forms of memory, knowledge, and relationships with ancestry.

Ricardo de Souza holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG, 1993), a Master's degree in Applied Linguistics (2000), and a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics (2003) from the School of Letters at the same university. He is a Full Professor of English in the School of Letters at UFMG, where he also serves as a faculty member in the Graduate Program in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. He is a researcher in psycholinguistics, focusing mainly on bilingual profile difference effects on language processing and bilingual cognition; the history and epistemological constitution of Brazilian psycholinguistic studies, and the impact of bilingualism on the constitution of subjectivities.

Lilian Teixeira de Souza is an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics (2012) from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), a Master’s degree in Linguistic Studies from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, 2007), and Bachelor's degrees in Letters from the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP, 2004) and in Computer Science from UFBA (2025). She leads the Center for Studies in Linguistic Diversity (DIVERSAS) and serves on the Linguistic Revitalization Committee of Abralin (the Brazilian Linguistics Association). She is a permanent faculty member of the Graduate Program in Language and Culture at UFBA (Salvador, BA). She is one of the coordinators of the project Teacher Education for Reading and Writing Instruction in Contexts of Social Inequality (PROLEDES), approved under the Abdias do Nascimento Academic Development Program. She was a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge (2018) and Agostinho Neto University (2022). Her research interests include the description of Indigenous and African languages, language revitalization, and teacher education.

Flávia Terra Cunha is a Spanish Language Lecturer at Mount Holyoke College. She has a Ph.D. in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an M.A. from The Ohio State University. She is originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and her research focuses on language attitudes and the linguistic development of heritage and second language speakers of Spanish and Portuguese.