Marina is a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Linguistics with a doctoral minor in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching. She works with sociolinguistics and translation studies.
Research: In the field of sociolinguistics, Marina has done work with language attitudes from Brazilian learners of Spanish, language ideologies in Catalonia and Spain, and language variation and contact in the Venezuelan diaspora in Brazil. In her dissertation, she explores Portuguese-Spanish language mixing and bilingual speech in this diaspora, in relation to Portuguese L2 acquisition. Additionally, in the field of translation studies, she is researching transfer competence in L2 and SHL learners in Southern Arizona. Marina is also a member of the Group of Inter-institutional Research in Languages (GIRL), which for now does research on pronominal variation in Brazilian Portuguese Twitter data.
Service: At the University of Arizona, she was a graduate representative in the Dean's Advisory Council at the College of Humanities, and the co-coordinator of the Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics Working Group for AY 2021-2022. In 2020, she re-started the Graduate Student Association in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese (GASP), and she served as president for two years. Additionally, she served as the graduate representative in the Graduate Studies Committee (in the same department) twice. Finally, she was a Committee Member in volunteering and abstract reviewing for the 29th, 30th and 31st Annual Graduate Symposia on Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literature, Language and Culture (three consecutive years) at the University of Arizona.
Past education and professional experience: Marina is a first-gen college graduate. She holds a BA in Translation and Interpreting (English, French, Catalan and Spanish) from Pompeu Fabra University, and an International MA in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language in Multilingual and International Contexts from University of Deusto. In her BA studies, she completed two academic exchanges: in 2011, at the University of Liverpool and in 2013, at ISIT Paris. In her MA, she studied at four universities besides the University of Deusto: Pompeu Fabra University, the University of Barcelona, the University of Campinas in Brazil and Stockholm University in Sweden. Before Academia, Marina worked as a translator and proof-reader, as well as a teacher of Spanish and English as foreign languages in several institutions in three countries: Brazil, Spain and Sweden.
Courses taught:
Spanish
SPAN 101: First-semester Spanish (regular, accelerated and online)
SPAN 102: Second-semester Spanish (accelerated)
SPAN 201: Third-semester Spanish (both regular and online)
SPAN 325: Intermediate Grammar and Writing (online)
SPAN 341: Translation and Interpretation: Social Justice and Practice (both regular and online)
SPAN 425: Advanced Grammar and Composition (online)
Portuguese
PORT 305: Portuguese for Spanish speakers (regular, live online, online and flex in-person)
PORT 325: Intermediate Grammar and Writing (online)