he/él/ele​
Education
I started as a Spanish major in 2013 at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. During this time, I worked as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Languages and Cultures as well as a senior Spanish tutor in the Excel Center for Foreign Languages and Social Sciences. I was also an organizing member of the Latino Student Union, Círculo del Español, and La Sociedad Honoraria Hispánica, where I collaborated with students, faculty, and local organizations to offer events promoting Latino visibility across campus. These included campus-wide themed dances, international musical guests, and book talks by Latinos in mainstream media.
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​In 2019 I began a Master’s in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where I acquired the technical skills necessary for independently carrying out variationist sociolinguistic and usage-based phonological research. My projects primarily examined the indexical potential of phonological variation in Puerto Rico, using conversational data from the PRESEA corpus and sung performances of reggaetón to inquire about the social and stylistic meaning of variable coda /s/ and /r/ pronunciation. I presented these works at conferences in Floria, Arizona, and various virtual venues during the Pandemic, and they became inspirations for my ongoing dissertation research. I also worked as an Instructor of Record for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. In my classroom, I sought opportunities to creatively integrate reggaetón into the curriculum to give students real-world exposure to a dialect and register of Spanish absent in a traditional language classroom. The success of this endeavor earned me an invitation to address the Department about the use of popular music as an encompassing deductive and inductive resource for teaching language. In 2021, I graduated with honors, two graduate certificates in College Teaching and Culture, Language and Social Practice, and an official offer to continue my work in at the University of Texas at Austin.
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I relocated to Austin to begin working with Dr. Almeida Jacqueline Toribio and Dr. Sandro Sessarego to craft and pursue a research agenda investigating the theoretical and applied intersections of sociolinguistics and ethnomusicology. This included the independent and collaborative completion and publication of five unique corpus-based studies highlighting the indexicality of /s/ and /r/ and artistic codemixing when stylized for the performance of reggaetón. My work on the reggaetón singing style has continued to my current undertaking of my doctoral dissertation, wherein I examine the enregisterment of reggaetón’s voice itself in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I have continued to present my work at various conference venues, and have been invited as a guest speaker to share my expertise with undergraduate and graduate students of both linguistics and Latin American cultural studies. I have published two of my original studies in highly visible Linguistics journals, including the special issue of Languages on the Sociolinguistics of Popular Music. This has made me an increasingly visible scholar, as evidenced by students and faculty alike continually seeking me out for collaborative and consultatory work. Most recently, I was awarded the opportunity to work as a lead editor for Vernon Press on the in-press project Puerto Rican Spanish, Reggaetón Style!, the first-ever published work dedicated solely to the (socio)linguistics of reggaetón.
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Currently, I am on a one-year research fellowship funded by The Graduate School of The University of Texas, where I was provided with funds to focus solely on my dissertation research. My dissertation research is directly supervised by my committee chair, Dr. Sessarego, and my project will be further reviewed by Dr. Toribio alongside Dr. Jossianna Arroyo Martínez, Dr. Ashley Coleman Taylor, and Dr. Ashlee Dauphinais Civitello.
Yoga Journey
I am an advocate for the integration of movement and mindfulness in academia settings. In addition to my development as a sociolinguist, I am also a trauma-informed registered yoga teacher with a background. While I first experienced yoga as a supplement to gymnastics and dance training in high school, I took my first class working as a coach and choreographer for USA gymnastics. Driven by curiosity, I enrolled in an undergraduate exercise science seminar titled “Yoga Practice and Philosophy”, serving as an experience-based introduction to the practice. This led me to Cambio Yoga, where I established a daily asana practice involving vinyasa, Bikram, and yin styles.
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​My personal practice became my main outlet for managing stress and anxiety while navigating my graduate studies, particularly during the COVID-19 lockdown. In 2021, after relocating to Austin I decided to pursue a 200-hour teacher training. I was fortunate to work with Waking Yoga, a team of trauma-informed yoga therapists who trained us to use movement and breath as tools for nervous system regulation and the relief of stress, anxiety, and depression. My time with Waking Yoga provided me with a practical model for integrating gentle movement and breathwork into non-traditional settings. I began to start my undergraduate seminars with 5 minutes of opt-in exercises and have been grateful to see how several students have adopted these techniques into their everyday self-care. I also sought out continuing education, and in 2022 I began offering donation-based, all-level classes in Austin’s parks through More Mindful Yoga. I have since transitioned to Flow Yoga Westgate, where my weekly classes —available in-person and live-streamed/recorded online— create space that offers and prioritizes present sensation, intellectual curiosity, and somatic and physical autonomy playfully.
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Most recently I have begun to design and record sequences tailored to the needs of academics and students as a way to help manage stress, anxiety, and muscular tension during long work hours. This growing archive, what I am calling “la costa del soul”, is available on this website. I hope to continue this line of work to provide students with non-traditional ways to experience and navigate academia.