Ph.D. Candidate Julia Donnelly Spiegelman was presented a Graduate Student Award by the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) for her research investigating the language learning experiences of gender nonbinary students in U.S. high schools. At the recent AAAL conference in Houston, Texas, Julia presented her paper entitled “‘Gender? I hardly know ‘er!’: Insights into linguistic agency from nonbinary adolescent learners of Spanish.” The Graduate Student Awards are awarded annually to students whose research promises to make a significant contribution to the field.

Julia also recently published two articles related to this research. “‘The pronouns EXIST!’: Linguistic existence in the borderlands as a U.S. non-binary heritage learner of Spanish” recently appeared in a Special Issue of Critical Multilingualism Studies on “pluriversalizing” Spanish language education.

“Queer breaches and normative devices: language learners queering gender, sexuality, and the L2 classroom,” co-authored with Ashley Moore, James Coda, and Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, was recently published in a Special Issue of the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism on the theme of “Queering Multilingualism.