Sara Castro Cantú (she/her/ella)

I am a PhD Candidate in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where I am pursuing my doctoral degree in Hispanic Linguistics.

I was born and raised in Mexico City. After my family moved to Los Angeles in 2010, I attended a California community college and later obtained my bachelor’s and master’s degrees at California State University, Long Beach (#GoBeach!)

My primary research strand explores language maintenance of Spanish in the U.S. I investigate the role of language ideologies on the sociocultural on the experiences of heritage speakers of Spanish, individuals who grew up in a Spanish-speaking home in the U.S. I also investigate the role of educational contexts on fostering language maintenance and positive ethnolinguistic identities.

Additionally, I am passionate about educational and linguistic equity. During my time as an undergraduate and graduate student at Cal State Long Beach, I worked as a writing tutor, peer mentor, and advisor. Currently, I work at the UCLA National Heritage Language Resource Center in content development for teachers of heritage languages.

In my free time, I enjoy visiting national parks, traveling the world via Google Earth, and watching old-timey movies.

You can learn about my research here.

You can learn more about my teaching here.