People

Jorge Valdés Kroff

Jorge Valdés Kroff completed his PhD in Hispanic Linguistics and Language Science at Pennsylvania State University in 2012. He joined the faculty in Spanish and Portuguese Studies in 2014. Primarily using eye tracking, his research examines the social, linguistic, and cognitive factors that modulate real-time processing of bilingual speech, especially in code-switched contexts.

Dylan Besse

Dylan is currently a 4th year undergraduate student in Psychology. He is planning to pursue a master’s degree in counseling psychology and enjoys studying the brain. His research interests include psychotherapy, cross-cultural psychology, and mental health disorders.

Ariela Fatima Comiotto

Ariela is a first-year Ph.D. student in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Florida. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and Portuguese from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) and a master’s degree in Psycholinguistics from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil).

Her research interests include heritage speakers, bilingualism and multilingualism, code-switching, and psycholinguistics. Her hobbies include hiking, visiting springs, cooking and crocheting.

María Domínguez

María Domínguez is a third-year Ph.D. student of Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Florida. She holds a B.A. with double majors in Spanish & Linguistics from the University of Florida and an M.A. in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of New Mexico.

Her current research on language brokering examines the linguistic and social experiences of Spanish heritage speakers in healthcare contexts. In her free time, María likes to read, go on walks, and try new matcha/coffee spots in Orlando.

Laura Domínguez Solera

Laura is a third-year Ph.D. student in Hispanic Linguistics. She holds both a B.A. in Hispanic Philology and an M.A. in Teaching Spanish as a Second Language from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). Her research interests include Spanish second and heritage language acquisition, language processing and code-switching.

Remi Goldberg

Remi Goldberg is an alum of the University of Florida, where she completed her bachelors in both Biology and Spanish. Her research interests are the judgement and processing of psychological verbs in Spanish by heritage speakers. In her free time, she reads and plays beach volleyball.

Julia Higdon

Julia is a last-year PhD Candidate who earned BAs in Spanish, Psychology, and Cognitive Science from the University of Richmond. Her research largely considers Spanish heritage speakers and the lexical factors (such as morphological regularity and frequency) that impact their processing and offline judgments.

Julia’s dissertation focuses Spanish heritage speakers’ judgments and processing of Spanish psychological verbs. In her free time, Julia enjoys trying new coffee shops and regularly attending concerts.

Claire Kuntz

Claire Kuntz is a fourth-year undergraduate student triple majoring in Linguistics, Spanish, and Communication Sciences and Disorders with a minor in Deaf and Hearing Sciences. Her research interests include psycholinguistics, bilingualism, and language rehabilitation. In her free time she enjoys playing board games, reading, and getting outdoors.

Jude Singleton

I am a graduate of the Linguistics MA program and the current Lab Manager of the Brain, Language, and Bilingualism Lab. My research is concerned with the pervasiveness and homogeneity of prediction during online language processing; I am also interested in cross-lectal processing and how our brains store and represent lect-specific forms.

I am presently developing EEG and eye-tracking projects looking at, respectively, L2 prediction and predictive utility of codeswitches across interlocutor types. When not conducting research, I am an enjoyer of American maximalist fiction and the music of David Berman.

Kehyla Tamayo Desdin

Hi! I am a 4th year double major in Microbiology and Spanish, I am currently a RA for Julia Higdon for her heritage speaker studies! I also work in the Spanish and Portuguese Studies Department, so feel free to stop by any time. When I am not at school or work, I’m at the beach, trying new coffee shops in the area, or walking on the trails nearby!

Hannah G. Treadway

Hannah G. Treadway is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Florida. Her research program adopts a context-to-cognition framework to study bilingualism, with a particular focus on code-switching.

Integrating methods from sociolinguistics (e.g., corpora, personal social network analysis), psycholinguistics (e.g., eye-tracking and self-paced reading), and cognitive neuroscience (e.g., event-related potentials and oscillations), her work maps the structure of situated language use in multilingual contexts onto adaptation in language processing and cognition. To learn more about Hannah’s current work, visit her website (https://hannahtreadway.github.io/).