Loretta Fernández holds a PhD in Language, Literacy, and Culture and is Associate Professor of Practice in World and Heritage Language Education in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Leading at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on world and language pedagogy, identity, and justice and equity in education. Her research interests include sociocultural theory, cognitive linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, multimodalities, Latinx student’s identity development, and qualitative research methods. Her work has been published in academic journals and volumes and presented in international and national conferences. She is currently the managing editor of Contingencies: A Journal of Global Pedagogy. Email: lof7@pitt.edu. She is also one of the Editors of the book Conceptual metaphor theory in world language education.
Erika Abarca Millán is an educator and researcher with a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Pittsburgh. Her work focuses on critical discourse studies, equitable access to higher education, and teacher and student identity. With over 15 years of experience teaching English and Spanish in Chile and the U.S., she is currently a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Spanish and Portuguese. She also holds research positions as a Senior Research Associate at NYU’s Metro Center and as an Associate Researcher at the University of Chile’s Center for Advanced Research in Education.