Nelson Flores

About

Nelson Flores is a professor of educational linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education (Penn GSE) and is affiliated with the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies and the Department of Linguistics. He serves as the director of the Ph.D. program in Educational Linguistics, faculty advisor for the Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, and chair of the Penn Faculty Senate Committee on Faculty and the Academic Mission. His research draws on archival, policy, and community-based methods to examine how ideas about language and race have been shaped over time in the United States and how these ideas influence contemporary educational debates. Dr. Flores is known for developing a raciolinguistic perspective, which explores how beliefs about language are deeply connected to histories of colonialism, and how these beliefs continue to impact educational practices and policies.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Linguistics
• Philosophy
• Psychology
• Pedagogy
• Law
• Social Science
• Social psychology
• Computer Science

Selected publications

• Rejecting abyssal thinking in the language and education of racialized bilinguals: A manifesto

  Critical Inquiry in Language Studies · 2021 · 488 citations

  Following Boaventura de Sousa Santos, the authors of this article reject the type of “abyssal thinking” that erases the existence of counter-hegemonic knowledges and lifeways, adopting instead the “from the inside out” perspective that is required for thinking constructively about the language and education of racialized bilinguals. On the basis of deep personal experience and extensive field-work research, we challenge prevailing assumptions about language, bilingualism, and education that are…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reimagining Race and Language

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020 · 104 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter presents a raciolinguistic perspective, which theorizes the historical and contemporary co-naturalization of language and race. Rather than taking for granted existing categories for parsing and classifying race and language, the chapter explores how and why these categories have been co-naturalized and imagines their denaturalization as part of a broader structural project of contesting white supremacy. The chapter explores five key components of a raciolinguistic perspect…

  PublisherDOI

• Undoing raciolinguistics

  Journal of Sociolinguistics · 2023-10-16 · 61 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In this commentary, we discuss common pitfalls associated with the study of race and language, focusing specifically on the recent emergence of raciolinguistics as a frame for these efforts. We examine how raciolinguistics can be taken up in ways that silo discussions of race from the rest of linguistics—as something that the “raciolinguists” do—such that careful study of issues including colonialism, power, and societal hierarchies is perpetually pushed to the margins of the field. We…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Social-Cognitive and Affective Antecedents of Code Switching and the Consequences of Linguistic Racism for Black People and People of Color

  Affective Science · 2021 · 45 citations

  DOI

• In Conversations with Scholars on Contemporary Issues and Research Agendas in Language Ideologies

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2023-09-20 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Interview

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ofelia Garcı́a

  77 shared

• Neida Ahmad

  The University of Texas at San Antonio

  64 shared

• Dan Heiman

  64 shared

• Cati de los Ríos

  64 shared

• María Teresa

  Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

  64 shared

• María Cioè

  The University of Texas at San Antonio

  64 shared

• Kathryn Henderson

  Alfred Health

  64 shared

• Carla García-Fernández

  University of North Texas

  64 shared

Education

• Ph.D, Urban Education

  City University of New York Graduate School and University Center

  2012

Awards & honors

• 2022 AERA Early Career Award
• 2020 CUNY Graduate Center Graduate of the Last Decade Award
• 2019 James Alatis Prize
• 2017 AERA Bilingual Education SIG Early Career Award
• 2017 Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship

Similar researchers at University of Pennsylvania

• Xinyin Chenh-70
• Rachel B. Bakerh-63
• Douglas A. Fryeh-36