Undergraduate Student UC Santa Cruz (Merrill, Applied Linguistics & Multilingualism '25) 

Interests: Politics of Language; Bilingualism; Translation; Film & Video Production; Project Management

Bio: Nora Ligotti is a fourth-year Applied Linguistics major with minors in Film & Digital Media and Digital Justice Studies. After discovering her interest in video and film production in high school, Nora worked for 2 years doing freelance videography and video editing. At UC Santa Cruz, Nora integrates her passion for language, digital media, and social justice on various projects. She has been a member of the Miriam Ellis International Playhouse since 2021, and in 2024 she joined UCSC’s Film Production Coalition. As a Digital Justice Studies minor and member of the Everett Program, Nora is working with the Monteverde Institute, a Costa Rican nonprofit, to create promotional digital content and teach curriculum on computer skills. In all her endeavors, Nora is passionate about bringing projects to life that highlight our shared humanity and effect change.

Undergraduate Student UC Santa Cruz (Porter, Applied Linguistics & Multilingualism '27) 

Interests: Second Language Acquisition, Spanish, Speech Language Pathology, Phonetics, Broadcast Radio Production

Bio: Gigi Lea is a second year undergraduate of UC Santa Cruz pursuing a B.A. in Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism (APLX). Outside of work, Gigi is an active member of the radio station on campus, KZSC. 

Assistant Professor, Languages & Applied Linguistics, UC Santa Cruz

Research Interests: Language contact; Bilingualism; Languages in Latin America; Morphosyntax; Usage-based and corpus-based approaches

Bio: Josefina Bittar received her Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of New Mexico. After completing her bachelor's degree in Spanish Language and Literature from the Universidad Nacional de Asunción (in Paraguay), she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to obtain a master's degree in Linguistics, also at UNM. Being born and raised in a highly bilingual country such as Paraguay sparked Josefina's interest in bilingualism and mutual influences between languages. Josefina's research focuses on the syntactic influences between Spanish and Paraguayan Guarani, the two official languages of her home country.