INTRODUCTION
I am a Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Irvine.
I currently serve as Director of the Program in Global Languages & Cultures and Director of the International Center for Writing & Translation. As an interdisciplinary scholar, I also hold affiliate faculty positions in the Departments of Anthropology, Comparative Literature, East Asian Studies, and Asian American Studies, and serve as core faculty in the PhD Program in Culture & Theory.
I have been teaching at UCI since 2014, shortly after earning my PhD from the University of Arizona. Living in the US-Mexico borderlands has had a lasting impact on my approach to research, where I remain committed to inquiries surrounding borders, both literal and figurative, along with spaces in-between more generally, and how they shape cultural phenomena, social relations, and everyday life. My recent work, in particular, focuses on the intersections between language and globalization, especially as they emerge in various realms such as in global Englishes, multilingualism, ethnic/national identification, language education, and literature.
My book, Locating Translingualism, published with Cambridge University Press, is the winner of the 2024 American Association for Applied Linguistics Book Award.
My latest books include:
- The Handbook of Translanguaging, co-edited with Li Wei, Prem Phyak, and Ofelia García, published in 2026 with Wiley-Blackwell.
- Entangled Englishes, co-edited with Sofia Rüdiger, published in 2025 with Routledge.
- Language as Hope, co-authored with Daniel N. Silva, published in 2024 with Cambridge University Press.
Click here to view a list of some of my recent and/or representative publications.