Biography

Josh Prada (PhD Texas Tech University) is Assistant Professor of Spanish Applied Linguistics in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, where he teaches courses in linguistics, applied language studies, and language education. Before joining IUPUI, Josh was a graduate instructor of Spanish, and served as coordinator of the Spanish program for heritage speakers, and coordinator of the Bilingualism ad Second Language Acquisition Lab at Texas Tech University, where he got his PhD. He holds a MA in Applied Linguistics from Birkbeck, University of London (United Kingdom), and a BA+MA in English Philology and TESOL from the Universidad de Granada (Spain). His specialisms are within the broad field of bilingualism and multilingualism with a focus on stigmatized bi-/multilingual communities, particularly, the US Latinx community and the multidialectal+multilingual speakers of Melilla (Spain). Josh has given paper presentations, invited academic talks, and workshops in the US, Canada, the UK, Poland, Norway, Spain.

Academic Interests

  • Heritage/minority language bi-/ multilingualism
  • Urban education for heritage/minority language bi-/multilinguals
  • Translinguistics, trans-perspectives and translanguaging
  • Chaos theory and complex dynamic systems

Teaching

  • Spanish Writing for Heritage/Native Speakers (undergraduate)
  • English~Spanish bilingualism in the US (undergraduate)
  • Methods of Teaching College Spanish (graduate)
  • Second language Acquisition of Spanish (graduate)
  • Teaching Practicum (graduate)

Service

Josh serves as editorial board member of two international journals: Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts (John Benjamins) and MODULEMA: A Scientific Journal for Linguistic Diversity (Universidad de Granada Press), and acts as external reviewer for multiple journals and book series including The International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, Language Teaching, Hispanic Review, among many others. Josh is guest editor of the special issue on Translingual and Multilingual Pedagogies (with Tarja Nikula, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland) published by the Euro-American Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages (2018). At IUPUI, Josh is the founder and convener of the Applied Linguistics Network, a special interest group that brings together scholars from across campus who work on different aspects of language, serving as a hub to present new projects, get feedback from peers, engage in research and teaching collaborations and socialize graduate students into professional research activity in the field.

Research Activity

Josh Prada’s works have appeared (and are forthcoming) in venues such as Foreign Language Annals, Handbook of Research and Practice in Heritage Language Education (Springer), Classroom Discourse, Language Teaching and the Linguistic Landscape (Springer), and Hispania, among others, in the form of research articles, book chapters and book reviews. He is particularly active in the fields of Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) and translinguistics.