SOCALab is a team. We are a collective of researchers at different stages of our careers, and we share a passion for the Spanish language in the US, Historical Sociolinguistics, and Digital Humanities. A majority of our members are ascribed to the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of California Riverside. We receive every year a class of eight to ten undergraduate researchers within the Undergraduate Research Program at UCR.
Our members, and our Lab, have been generously supported by the Hellman Foundation; the Regents´ Faculty Fellowship and the Regent´s Faculty Development Award; the Mellon Mays Foundation for Undergraduate Research; the Chancellor Fellowship for Undergraduate Research; Humanists@work; UCHRI; UC Mexus, and the Department of Hispanic Studies at UCR.
Covadonga Lamar Prieto, PhD PhD PhD
- Ph.D. in Philology, U. de Oviedo (Spain), 2007
- Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature, University of California Los Angeles, 2012
- Ph.D. in History and Sociocultural Studies, U. de Oviedo (Spain), 2019
- Postgraduate Certificate in Digital Humanities, UNED, 2017
Covadonga Lamar Prieto specializes in Sociolinguistics of the Spanish in the US. Her corpus-based research deals with Historical Spanish in California, with a focus on language change, dialectology, and bilingualism. Her book El español de California en el XIX (Iberoamericana) examines the sociolinguistic situation of Spanish in Nineteenth-Century California and the social, linguistic and economic situation of the Spanish speaking inhabitants of California after and before the Annexation to the US. She is also interested in the contemporary consequences of historical language contact. Besides being a Linguist, Covadonga is a Colonialist. She specializes in Colonial Mexico and the cultural production of the first Criollos: how these Criollos defined their new transatlantic identity, and the way they used to examine their society through literature
Graduate Researcher Team!
Miriam Villazón Valbuena, M.A.
- B.A. in English, Universidad de Oviedo (Spain)
- M.A. in Spanish, UCR
Miriam is a PhD candidate in Spanish Sociolinguistics in the University of California, Riverside. Her research interests include bilingual communities and the study of minoritized languages and what is their impact on the sociolinguistic aspect of the speakers and social media, alongside with the study of the history of the Spanish language in the territory of California throughout digital humanities. Miriam is a Vice-President of Asturian Studies. She is currently organizing the series of workshops and roundtables “Iberian Minoritized Languages: Asturian 101” in which Asturian language is discussed from different cultural perspectives with scholars from both sides of the Atlantic.
Natalie Saffi, M.A.
- B.A. in Spanish, UCR
- M.A. in Spanish, UCR
Natalie Saffi earned her BA in Spanish with a focus in Linguistics and is currently a PhD student at the University of California Riverside. Natalie has worked on the Marianopedia project in the SOCALab since her undergraduate career. Her interests include the Spanish of California, Linguistic Netnography, Latinx/Hispanic Sociolinguistics; specifically, inclusivity, language and identity, and the interplay of these as an “other” within a dominant culture.
Miguel Muñoz Valtierra, M.A.
- B.A. in Spanish, University of California Riverside
- B.A. in Education, Society and Human Development, University of California Riverside
- M.A. in Spanish, University of California Riverside
Miguel Muñoz Valtierra is a fourth year Ph.D. in the Hispanic Studies program at UCR. He was a CHASS F1RST peer educator and a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow at UCR. He is now working on his ABD. His research interests include sociolinguistics, social media and language, and community activism. His research focus is on the community of Bloomington, California and how linguistic phenomena influence community spaces.
Martina Visconti, M.A.
- B.A. in Hispanic Philology (Universidad de Córdoba, Spain)
- B.A. in English and German Translation and Interpreting (Universidad de Córdoba, Spain)
- M.A. in Spanish, UCR
Martina Visconti is a first year PhD student at the Department of Hispanic Studies in UCR. Her research interests include medical translation, graphic medicine, and Spanish for healthcare. Her focus is the access of Hispanic communities to healthcare information and services.
Mariam Nadirashvili
- B.A. in Spanish & Global Studies, UCR
მარიამ ნადირაშვილი is currently a first-year MA student in the Department of Hispanic Studies. Her academic interests center around the intersection of language, culture, and identity, with a specific focus on how language ideologies shape and reinforce prejudices among students learning Spanish as a foreign language. She is particularly interested in how these ideologies impact motivation, language acquisition, and intercultural competence in the classroom.
Jose Luis Godinez
- B.A. in Spanish (Spanish Lingusitics), UCR
José Luis is a first-year MA student in the Department of Hispanic Studies, where he is focusing his research in sociolinguistics. He is also serving his second elected term on the Board of Directors for the Jurupa Area Recreation and Parks District (JARPD), Division II, and is currently the President. With nearly a decade of experience as a bilingual community liaison and interpreter/translator in public schools, José Luis is committed to advancing linguistic equity in California and supporting communities grappling with issues of identity and legitimacy.
Faculty Collaborators
Claudia Holguín Mendoza, PhD
- Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2011
- M.A. New Mexico State University, 2008
- B.A. University of Texas, 1998
Holguín Mendoza’s research is focused on the field of Sociolinguistics; specifically in the areas of socio-pragmatics and stylistic variation (emphasis on Mexican Spanish). Her focus in Spanish heritage language education encompasses critical pedagogical approaches, the interplay of identity and language, ideologies and representations of language, racial formations in the US, and the sociopolitics of language education.
Isabel Álvarez Sancho, PhD
Dr. Isabel Alvarez Sancho is a Professor of Hispanic Studies at Oklahoma State
University and the president of Asturian Studies / SAnTINA, an academic network
created at UC Riverside aimed to develop the field of Asturian Studies internationally.
She specializes on twenty and twenty-first century Iberian Cultural Studies. Her
research examines conceptualizations of time in the art and culture created after an
event does away with a common vision of the world. She has studied interpretations of
history in post-Spanish Civil War exile literature, and representations of the future in
contemporary film. Her most recent work on present-day Asturian music explores new
engagements with tradition in a community with a minoritized language.
Cristina Bleortu, PhD
Cristina Bleorțu tabaja en la Universidad “Ștefan cel Mare”, Suceava. Ella trabajó en la Universidad de Zúrich como investigadora posdoctoral en el proyecto “Más allá del estructuralismo”. Cartas a Eugenio Coseriu y la historia de la lingüística en el siglo XX. Es licenciada en filología rumana e hispánica (Universidad “Ștefan cel Mare”, Suceava), máster “Lengua, literatura y cultura hispánicas” (Universidad “Alexandru Ioan Cuza”, Iași) y “Español como Segunda Lengua” (Universidad de Oviedo). En noviembre de 2018 defendió su tesis doctoral (Universidad de Oviedo (sobresaliente cum laude) en cotutela con Universidad de Zúrich (summa cum laude), que es un estudio sociolingüístico sobre una comunidad norteña de España (Pola de Siero), que se publicó en 2021, Aproximación al habla de La Pola Siero. Variación lingüística: descripción y percepción. Es codirectora de la revista Energeia y una de las coordinadoras de las reseñas de la Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana (RILI) desde 2023. Sus artículos y libros se centran en sociolingüística y entonación. Participó y participa en varios proyectos internacionales de sociolingüística y entonación (El Atlas interactivo de la entonación del español, Atlas Prosodique Multimédia de l’Espace Roman, Analiza contrastivă a intonației limbilor română și spaniolă. O abordare sociolingvistică, entre otros); tradujo y editó varios libros de lingüística al rumano y español. Recogió el corpus de encuestas semiespontáneas de Pola de Siero y Dărmănești. Obtuvo el gran premio para la mejor investigadora predoctoral rumana de fuera, en 2017 (Gala Studenţilor Români din Străinătate, Palacio del Parlamento, Bucarest) y, en 2020, el premio para la mejor investigadora joven en ciencias humanas (Premiile Ad Astra, Bucarest).
Claudia Elena Menéndez Fernández, PhD
Claudia Elena Menéndez Fernández (1994, Asturies) holds a PhD in Romance Philology from the University of Uviéu since 2020. She works as an Assistant Professor of Romance Linguistics at this University. Her main lines of research are Romanic etymology, onomastics, sociolinguistics and Asturian dialectology. She has visiting scholar in France and Italy, collaborates in international research projects in Romance languages, such as the DÉRom project (Dictionnaire Étymologique Roman), and has published numerous works in journals and impact monographs. She teaches Asturian in different University Extension courses, is co-director of Formientu: Revista de Lliteratura, and she is the vice-president of the association Iniciativa pol Asturianu, which aims to defend the linguistic rights of Asturians and the dignification of the Asturian language.
JyEun Son, PhD
- Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature, University of California Los Angeles, 2018
- M.A. in Hispanic Linguistics, Seoul National University, 2006
- B.A. in Hispanic Languages & Literature, Seoul National University, 2004
JyEun Son is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Hispanic Language & Literature, College of Humanities at Seoul National University. She specializes in intonational phonology, prosodic transfer and acquisition of prosody. Also, she is expanding her research interests to prosody-pragmatic interface, sociolinguistics, language/dialect contact, heritage speakers and more. Some of her most recent works are “A Change of Direction in Research on Spanish in Southern California: Focusing on Dialect Contact” and “The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the Spanish language: dialectal use of terminology related to COVID-19”.
SOCALab Alumni
Álvaro González Alba, PhD – Assistant Professor, Regis University
- B.A in Education. Universidad de Huelva (Spain)
- M.A in SLA. Universidad Camilo José Cela. UCJC (Spain)
- PhD, UC Riverside, 2023
Dr. Álvaro González Alba is an Assistant Professor at the Modern and Classical Languages Dept. at Regis University in Denver. He was born in Córdoba, Spain. He has earned his BA and MA in Spain, where he studied education, the teaching of languages and second language acquisition. Moreover, he has earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Riverside, where his dissertation focused on the sociolinguistics relationships within the use of Spanish and social media platforms interaction with an emphasis in the Spanish minoritized communities of California. Besides, his research interests focus on Digital Humanities, linguistics attitudes and ideologies towards Spanish speakers and ethical concerns on social media research. Furthermore, and as part of some of his projects, Dr. González is also interested in bilingualism, and pedagogies for the teaching of Spanish with special attention to the use of the sociolinguistic history of the US Spanish speakers in the classrooms.
You can check some of his publications here
María Gutiérrez Gómez, UCR Undergraduate. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the Hispanic Studies Department at the same institution.
Evelyn Gámez, UCR Undergraduate Chancellor Fellow 2015-2017. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics at UC Davis.
Cynthia Romero, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Researcher and UCDC Fellow, 2014-2017. She is currently working for Teach for America and completed an MEd in the University of Nevada Las Vegas
Jazmine Exford, Mellon Mays Undergraduate Researcher, 2014-2017. She is an Assistant Professor at Florida International University
Sophia Scandurro, UCR Undergraduate Chancellor Fellow 2022-2023.
Siomara Salinas, UCR Undergraduate.
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