Fields of interest

• Language documentation and description
• Language endangerment
• Anthropological linguistics
• Spatial semantics
• Cognitive linguistics
• Mesoamerican languages
• Mayan languages, specifically Yokot'an (chontal de Tabasco)
• Multilingualism in education

Research

My project aims to investigate how space is linguistically structured in Yokot’an (Chontal de Tabasco) a Mayan language spoken in the southeast of Mexico by around 30 thousand people and barely learned now as a first language by young generations. The corpus for this research will comprise audio-video recordings of different kinds of data from observed as well as staged communicative events (conversations, narratives, gestures, descriptions of static as well as dynamic stimuli) and elicitations for acceptability judgments. The overarching goal of the  project is to  undertake a comprehensive documentation and description of Yokot’an spatial reference. For an understanding of spatial language use  It will also focus on various cultural practices especially pilgrimages (e.g.,  commemorative festivities of the dead, Tila lord pilgrimage and pilgrimages among villages locally known as 'enramadas').

Teaching activities

National Autonomous University of Mexico(UNAM)

• Introduction to Linguistics at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters in the department of Modern Letters.

National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH)

• Preparatory course of Linguistics studies.

CONAFE/INEA/DGEIB

• Basic liguistics methods to the analysis and description of mexican indigenous languages.
• Courses of intercultural and multilingual education for supervisors and instructors of basic school levels.

Curriculum vitae

2010-2013 

• Research Master in Linguistics: Structures and Variation in Languages  of the World at Leiden University.

2009 

• BA in Linguistics at National School of Anthropology and History. Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH). Cum laude

2006-2009 
Research Center and Advance Studies in Social Anthropology  (Centro de Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social-CIESAS)

• Researcher in ‘The Project Sentece Strcuture and Word Order in Maya Yukatek and  other maya languages.’

2007-2008 
National Council to Education Encouragement . Consejo Nacional de Fomento Educativo-CONAFE)

• Researcher.  Developing materials and teaching linguist methods to the analysis of indigenous languages of Mesoamerica and Spanish for teacher of basic school level.

2005-2006 
National Institute of Indigenous Languages (Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas-INALI). 

• Head of Linguistic Certification in Indigenous Languages.
• Researcher  in the project  the “Catalogue Project of Mexican Indigenous languages: Contemporary Mapping of the Historical Settlements”. Yokot’an (chontal de Tabasco), Ixcateco, Chuj, Kanjobal, Tojolabal, Yukatek and Nahuatl languages

2005 
General Coordination of Intercultural and Bilingual Education (Coordinación  General de Educación Intercultural Bilingüe-CGEIB).

• Research Assistant. Analysis and  practice of the intercultural education model for  basic education level.

2004 
World Bank

• Reporting the impact of intercultural bilingual education policies in the Maya area.
• Field Worker, ethnographer.
• Developing the logistics for the field work in the Mayan area (Campeche, Yucatan and Quintana Roo).