People |
Professors
Juana M. LICERAS
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Elena VALENZUELA
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Raquel FERNÁNDEZ FUERTES
Raquel Fernández Fuertes is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Valladolid (Spain) and she is the director of the UVALAL research group (University of Valladolid Language Acquisition Lab). She specializes in linguistic theory, comparative grammar and bilingual acquisition. In her research she makes use of linguistic theory and, in particular, of minimalist premises in order to account for language-contact phenomena and the latent relationship between native and non-native acquisition. This is achieved by means of the analyses of spontaneous and experimental data elicited via different methodologies.
contact: [email protected] uvalal.uva.es 
Reza FARZI is a language professor at the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute (OLBI) at the University of Ottawa and currently serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies Programs at OLBI. His research and teaching focus on second language acquisition, bilingualism, and technology-enhanced language learning. He is especially interested in how digital tools can support additional language learning, the creation of effective and inclusive curricular content, and the development of academic literacies among immigrants and international students in Canadian universities.
Contact: [email protected] |
Graduate Students
Andrea OLIVARES. PhD Candidate. Andrea joined the lab in 2021. She holds an M.A. in Teaching English and Spanish as second/foreign languages from the University of Alicante (Spain), and an M.A. in General Education from Albright College (United States). She completed her B.A. in her home country Colombia. Her main research interest is technology-mediated task-based language teaching and learning with an emphasis in digital genres of writing. Her thesis focuses on blogs and the reflective use of digital tools in L2 writing. Contact: [email protected] 
Gladys CRUZ. PhD student. Gladys joined the lab in 2020. She completed her BA in Language Teaching at Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca in 2017 and her MA in Hispanic Studies at Western Michigan University in 2020. She is interested in language contact, bilingualism, and language acquisition. Her thesis investigates Spanish in contact with Indigenous languages and, specifically, the Zapotec variety of Spanish.
Contact: [email protected] |
Eréndira DÍAZ VALENCIA. PhD Student. She began her BA in Modern English Language and Literature at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and then moved to Germany to complete her BA in Spanish and English at the Universität zu Köln (2019). She holds a M.Ed. in Spanish and English from the Bergische Universität Wuppertal (2022) and is currently pursuing a PhD in Spanish at the University of Ottawa. Her areas of interest are language acquisition, language contact, pragmatics, and cognitive linguistics.
Contact: [email protected] 
Gabriela ROMERO AVILA. PhD student. Gabriela completed her Bachelor of Science in Human Communication Disorders at the Universidad de las Américas (2012) and her MA in Neurological Rehabilitation at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico with an internship in Language Pathology at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (2015). She worked as a Speech and Language Pathologist in Mexico City and is currently pursuing a PhD in Spanish at the University of Ottawa. She is interested in bilingualism and language acquisition in cognitive disorders.
Contact: [email protected] |
Manuel ZELADA. PhD student. Manuel joined the lab in 2021. He completed a MA in Spanish (2020) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a MA in Philosophy (2016) at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú. He also holds a BA in Spanish Linguistics (2015) from this university and another in Philosophy (2011) from the Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya (Perú). His areas of interest are Queer Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Digital Linguistics, and Spanish Pragmatics, specially, discourse markers acquisition and functions.
Contact: [email protected] |
Michela GENTILE. PhD student. Michela joined the lab in 2017. She completed her MA in Spanish (2018) at the University of Ottawa. She lived in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) for three years, where she began her BA in English and Spanish philology. She moved back to Rome and completed her BA in Rome (Italy) in 2016 at SSML San Domenico. Her areas of interest include morphology, syntax, second language teaching and comparative linguistics. She is currently working on the acquisition of morphosyntactic features in Spanish and Italian.
Contact: [email protected] |
Recently graduated
Fati OSUMAN. PhD candidate. She earned her MA in Spanish at Western Michigan University, USA (2018) and her BA in Economics and Spanish at the University of Ghana (2015). She also holds a Certificate in Advanced Spanish Proficiency (2014) from the University of Cienfuegos ‘Carlos Rafael Rodriguez’, Cuba. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Spanish at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests include language assessment, second language acquisition and pedagogy. Contact: [email protected] 
Joselyn BROOKSBANK recently received her PhD from the University of Ottawa. Joselyn joined the lab in 2017. She completed both her MA in Bilingualism Studies (2017) and her BA in Spanish and Linguistics (2014) at the University of Ottawa. She also holds a Montessori Casa dei Bambini degree (2015) from the Instituto Montessori de México A.C. in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Her areas of interest include heritage language maintenance, bilingual first language acquisition, and second language teaching in Montessori environments. Her thesis focuses on parental strategies for Spanish heritage language maintenance in Canada.
Contact: [email protected] |
Vanesa ALONSO GONZÁLEZ received her PhD from the University of Ottawa. Member of the LarLab since 2018, she completed her MA in Spanish at Georgia State University (2017). Originally from Spain, she completed her BA in Journalism at the Complutense University of Madrid (2001). She worked as a journalist in Spain and the United States for more than 10 years before returning to the university. Her thesis focused on syntactic features of Spanish modal infinitival constructions in English/Spanish bilinguals. Her areas of academic interest also include heritage language maintenance through reading, second language teaching and acquisition, and creative writing in L2.
Contact: [email protected] |
Collaborators
María Pilar ÁLVAREZ JÚLVEZ joined the lab as a Visiting Research Scholar in 2013. She has been involved in various activities and has specifically collaborated in the projects related with Minority and Majority languages in Canada and Spain, Bilingualism and Bilingual L1 Acquisition. She holds an MA in Educational Technology from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona and was Practicum Instructor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the UNAM in Canadá. From October 2021 to December 2024 she was the Education Attaché at the Spanish Embassy in Canada.
Contact: [email protected] 
Yoriko AIZU joined the lab in 2010. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Ottawa (2016) and an Honours BA in Languages from Ritsumeika University in Japan (1999). Her main research interest is the acquisition and processing of Japanese sentence structure by L2 learners and Heritage speakers.
Contact: [email protected] 
Kassandra AYALA-NAJERA joined the lab in 2017. She holds a Master of Education (Studies in Teaching & Learning) and a Master of Arts in Spanish from the University of Ottawa where she also completed her BA in Communications and Spanish in 2017. Her areas of interest include heritage language maintenance, multilingualism, language attrition, and code-switching in general and on social media.
Contact: [email protected] 
Alicia CARBALLO FERNANDEZ Nací en Buenos Aires, Argentina. Allí realicé mis primeros estudios y obtuve el diploma de Profesora de Letras Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires, Argentina. En 1987 llegué a Ottawa y obtuve un M.A en Español y un Diploma graduado en Traducción. En 1995 me trasladé a EEUU y allí hice la certificación en educación bilingüe. Luego trabajé como especialista en lectura y en adquisición de segunda lengua a nivel primario.
Contact: [email protected] 
Nicté FULLER MEDINA leads two on-going projects on the linguistic outcomes of language contact and the historical development of language mixing in spontaneous speech. The Language Contact in Belize project examines bilingual compound verbs, mixed DPs, and Kriol-Spanish codeswitching in contemporary data. The second project, Language, Culture and History: Belize in a Digital Age, uses the tools of digital scholarship to create open access corpora of sociolinguistic interviews collected pre-1990 in Belize.
Contact: [email protected] Twitter: @Dr.Nicte 
Javier E. GARCÍA LEÓN is Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He holds a PhD in Spanish from the University of Ottawa, an MA in Linguistics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and a B.Ed. and Humanities (Spanish and English) from Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (Colombia). He conducts interdisciplinary research in language, power, and representation. He has worked on Languages in Contact (Spanish and Creole Languages in the Caribbean) and on Linguistic Attitudes and Policies (Colombia). He also works on Critical Discourse Analysis, Queer Linguistics, and Latin American (LGBTQI+) Cultural and Media Studies. His work has been published in venues such as the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Revista de Estudios Colombianos, Latin American Research Review, Lingüística y Literatura, Lenguaje, Cuadernos de Lingüística Hispánica, Forma y Función, Folios, Boletín de Filología, among others.
Contact: [email protected] 
Raquel LLAMA joined the lab in 2010. She holds a PhD in Spanish from the University of Ottawa. Her main area of expertise is Third Language Acquisition. Her research interests include heritage language acquisition in trilingual contexts and language attrition.
Contact: [email protected] |
Marta VILOSA SÁNCHEZ recently received her PhD from the University of Girona, Spain. Her dissertation is the only work on Spanish L3 (Arabic L1, English L2) that has dealt with the acquisition of three aspects of the Determiner Phrase (DP) in Spanish: gender within the DP, Inalienable Possession and Expletive Generic Articles. Her supervisors were Francesc Roca Urgell (University of Girona) and Juana Muñoz Liceras (University of Ottawa). She has a BA Honours in Romance and Spanish Philology from the University of Girona and an MA from the University of Jaén, Spain. She works as a part-time instructor at the Instituto Cervantes of Alexandria and at the University of Alexandria in Egypt.
Contact: [email protected] 
Samara DE SOUZA ALMEIDA RUAS is an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She specializes in Second Language Acquisition and comparative syntax of Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish from a theoretical and experimental linguistic approach. Her research interests include bilingualism/multilingualism, heritage languages, "border portuñol" and language education.
Contact: [email protected] 
Almudena BASANTA joined the lab in 2011. She holds a PhD from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Since 2004 she has been an Assistant Professor at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and from 2008 to 2012 she was an invited Professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). She has taught Spanish at European Institutions such as the Instituto Cervantes in Brussels (Belgium) and the UNAM-Canada. Her research interests include language pedagogy and the teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language (ELE), language contact and the history of Romance languages.
Contact: [email protected] 
Isabel CONTRO CASTALDO joined the lab in 2015. She holds a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese Linguistics from the University of Sao Paulo where she also completed her MA in Spanish and Portuguese Languages. She also obtained a degree in Portuguese and Spanish Languages at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University in Sao Paulo. Currently, she is a professor at the São Paulo State Faculty of Technology and at the Instituto Cervantes of São Paulo.
Contact: [email protected], [email protected] 
Marco LLAMAZARES is a member of the Language Acquisition Research Laboratory of the University of Ottawa since 2016. He holds a BA in Mathematics with a Minor in Classical Languages and an MA in Linguistics, with specialization in Computational Linguistics. He has taught Mathematics, Linguistics and English and Spanish as Foreign and Second Languages and has worked as a translator and as a copy-editor for a variety of scientific journals. He is a native speaker of English and Spanish and has advanced proficiency in French, and intermediate proficiency in Japanese and Basque. His research interests deal with the relationship between Language, Music, Dance and the Martial Arts.
Contact: [email protected] 
David L. GARCÍA LEÓN is Assistant Professor / Lecturer in Spanish (Intercultural Studies) at Maynooth University, Ireland. He holds a PhD in Spanish from the University of Ottawa, and an MA in Linguistics from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. His interdisciplinary research addresses the relationship between language, representation, power, masculinities, disability, and gender by combining Critical Discourse Analysis, Queer Linguistics and Cultural and Media Studies. He has also worked on linguistic policies, creole languages, and language teaching and learning. His research has been published in venues such as Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Revista de Estudios Colombianos, Latin American Research Review, Lingüística y Literatura, Cuadernos de Lingüística Hispánica, Forma y Función, Boletín de Filología, and Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. Contact: [email protected] 
Irina GOUNDAREVA is the Spanish Program Coordinator and professor at UNAM-Canada. She holds a PhD in Spanish from the University of Ottawa, an MA in Spanish from the University of British Columbia and a BA from the University of Victoria in Spanish and Linguistics. She joined LARLab in 2011. Her research interests include Spanish as a foreign language acquisition, pedagogy, assessment and teacher training.
Contact: [email protected] |
