Lisette Castaneda

Lisette Alexandra Castañeda is a PhD student in Spanish Linguistics at Arizona State University, where she serves as a Teaching Associate. Her research interests focus on sociolinguistics and heritage language pedagogy, particularly in how language, identity, and pedagogy intersect in bilingual and multilingual communities. She holds a B.A. in Applied Linguistics and Spanish, where she gained extensive research experience in projects that connect language, community, and social justice.

As an undergraduate, she was part of the Activist Applied Linguistics project through the Department of Applied Linguistics under Professor Janet Cowal, co-authoring the poster Drought and Judgement: Socio-hydrology and the Framing of Houselessness. She also collaborated with the Bilingual Research Lab under Dr. Maria Kapantzoglou, co-authoring a poster presented at the 2024 American Speech–Language–Hearing Association (ASHA) Conference in Seattle, WA. 
Through her doctoral studies, she aims to advance inclusive approaches to Spanish heritage language education while contributing to broader conversations in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics.