Dr. Josh Prada is a Hispanic scholar working at the intersection of multilingualism, education, and social justice, with a sharp focus on the sociolinguistic and educational aspects defining the day-to-day experiences of the US Latinx/Hispanic community. As a member of this community, his work weaves together empirical, philosophical, and activist perspectives, gearing his program of inquiry towards the advancement of equity, plurality, and just change. His approach to research and practice centers on the perspectives and worldviews of racialized and language-minoritized people who, like himself, find themselves navigating institutionalized neglect, normalized racism, and identity erasure because of their multilingual and intercultural backgrounds.
As a queer academic of migrant background, he spent his childhood and adolescence between Melilla (a small multilingual and diverse city in North Africa) and London (a superdiverse world capital in the UK), and his adulthood in West Texas and Southern Indiana. These experiences, coupled with his collaborative work with local Latinx/Hispanic community partners, inform his pursuit of social action through activist, antiracist educational proposals.
In the field of applied linguistics, his research program is known for originally bridging the fields of heritage language education and translanguaging. Taking together, his agenda aims at devising ways to privilege the multilingual and diverse voices of Latinx/Hispanic youths in college and beyond.
He holds editorial positions as Associate Editor of the Spanish as a Heritage Language Journal and Reviews Editor for the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.
At the undergraduate level, Dr. Prada teaches courses in Spanish for heritage/native speakers and introductory courses in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. At the graduate level, Josh teaches courses for MAT and doctoral students, including Spanish as a heritage language, sociolinguistics, teaching methods, and teaching practicum.
