Center for the Study of Global Change

About

A Wanka/Quechua Native from South America, I am an educational linguist and sociolinguist and an Assistant Professor of Language Education in the Department of Literacy, Culture and Language Education at Indiana University’s School of Education. I’m also Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Anthropology and in the Latino Studies Program. In 1980 I received my BA in Translation (English, French and Cuzco Quechua) from the Ricardo Palma University in Peru, and I earned my MA in Hispanic Linguistics from The Ohio State University in 1995. My PhD, in Educational Linguistics and Sociolinguistics, was awarded by the University of Pennsylvania in 2007. I’ve published articles in Quechua, English, and Spanish, and presented papers internationally; in addition, I have considerable experience in second- and foreign-language education, having been a Spanish and Quechua lecturer at universities in Peru and the United States. Before joining the faculty of Indiana University in 2007, I was an instructor at Princeton University for four years.

My research interests include revitalization of indigenous languages (Quechua and Aymara), the politics of language, language attitudes and ideologies, minority languages and technology, language maintenance and shift, language contact phenomena, multilingualism and bilingual education, indigenous literacies in the Americas, and issues of language, culture, and identity in the Andes and beyond. This interdisciplinary work draws on fields as diverse as macro- and micro-sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, education, the ethnography of communication, language policy and planning, pragmatics, politics and history. It has been published in venues that include The International Journal of the Sociology of Language, The international Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Amerindia, The School for International Training Occasional Papers, and Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies. With Linda Grabner I co-edited Lenguas e identidades en los Andes: perspectivas ideológicas y culturales [Languages and Identities in the Andes: Ideological and Cultural Perspectives] (Abya-Yala 2005). Currently, I’m working on three articles to be published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Wiley-Blackwell Publishing; in addition, I’m completing a book manuscript entitled Language Policy and Planning, and Language Ideologies in Peru: The Case of Cuzco’s High Academy of the Quechua Language.