People

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 Amaral 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 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, Brazil. Her research interests include Indigenous languages, language revitalization, and language teaching methodologies. She has worked with several native Brazilian groups in the State of Rondonia.

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. 

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.

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

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.

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), in Brazil. 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 is describing the cosmopoetics of Tikmũ’ũn (Maxakali) songs, analyzing how song, image, sound, and territory constitute forms of memory, knowledge, and relationships with ancestry.

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.