JOSH PRADA
mission |
I am Josh Prada, an applied linguist working at the intersection of multilingualism, education and social justice, with a sharp focus on the sociolinguistic and educational aspects defining the day to day experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse communities--particularly, the US Latinx/Hispanic community. As a member of this community, my work weaves together empirical, philosophical and activist perspectives, gearing my program of inquiry towards the advancement of equity, plurality and just change. My approach to research and practice centers the perspectives and world-views of racialized and language-minoritized people who find themselves navigating institutionalized neglect, normalized racism, and identity erasure because of their multilingual, transcultural and transnational backgrounds.
As a queer academic of migrant background, I spent my childhood and adolescence between Melilla (a small multilingual and diverse city in North Africa) and London (a superdiverse world capital in the UK), and my adulthood in West Texas and Southern Indiana. These experiences, coupled with my collaborative work with local Latinx/Hispanic community partners, inform my pursuit of social action through activist, antiracist, decolonial educational proposals. Onto-epistemologically, I draw from concepts and ideas born in southern and borderlands ways of knowing as means to question the nature of ideas produced in imperialistic traditions.
In the field of applied linguistics, my research program is known for originally bridging heritage language education and translanguaging. Taken together, my agenda aims at devising ways to privilege the diverse voices and experiences of multilingual youths in college and beyond.
As a queer academic of migrant background, I spent my childhood and adolescence between Melilla (a small multilingual and diverse city in North Africa) and London (a superdiverse world capital in the UK), and my adulthood in West Texas and Southern Indiana. These experiences, coupled with my collaborative work with local Latinx/Hispanic community partners, inform my pursuit of social action through activist, antiracist, decolonial educational proposals. Onto-epistemologically, I draw from concepts and ideas born in southern and borderlands ways of knowing as means to question the nature of ideas produced in imperialistic traditions.
In the field of applied linguistics, my research program is known for originally bridging heritage language education and translanguaging. Taken together, my agenda aims at devising ways to privilege the diverse voices and experiences of multilingual youths in college and beyond.
