AERA Bilingual Education Research SIG Awards

On behalf of the leadership team of the AERA BER SIG, we send all of our nominees and awardees a huge congratulations! We are celebrating the recognition of your excellence in scholarship and thank you for all you have done and are doing to positively impact the field of bilingual education. Congratulations to all! 

Our SIG offers the following awards: 

1. Lifetime Achievement Award

2. Early Career Award

3. Outstanding Dissertation Award

4. Graduate Student Travel Awards

2026 Award Winners

Lifetime Achievement Award: Nancy Hornberger, University of Pennsylvania

Outstanding Dissertation Award, First Place: Dolores D. Lopez, University of California San Diego

Dissertation Title: Advancing critical consciousness in dual language education: Teacher agency and beliefs in a curriculum design research-practice partnership.

Outstanding Dissertation Award, Second Place: Massiel Zaragoza, University of Illinois, Chicago

Dissertation Title: Exploring secondary Latinx dual language teacher experiences via testimonio and critical action research

Outstanding Dissertation Award, Third Place: Devon Hendrick-Shaw, University of Colorado, Boulder

Dissertation Title: Learning to become policy actors: A qualitative longitudinal study of bilingual special educators in synchronous-service teacher preparation

2025 Award Winners

Lifetime Achievement Award: Alfredo Artiles, Stanford

Outstanding Dissertation Award, First Place (tie): Koeun Park

Dissertation Title: Youth Counter-Storytelling: The Educational Experience of Refugee-Background K’Nyaw Youths in Korean Dual Language Bilingual Education

Outstanding Dissertation Award, First Place (tie): Cory Buckband

Dissertation Title: Three Languages, Many Multilingualisms: Exploring the Cultural Production of Eliteness in a Trilingual Elementary Charter School

Outstanding Dissertation Award, Second Place: Nancy Domínguez-Fret

Dissertation Title: Sowing Seeds of Resistance: Heritage Spanish Teachers Engaging in Testimonio and Critical Action Research

Outstanding Dissertation Award, Third Place: Emily Anne Holtz

Dissertation Title: Gentrification of Educational Programs: a Critical Race Spatial Analysis of Programming Allocation for Linguistically Diverse Students in Texas

2024 Award Winners

Lifetime Achievement Award: Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, NYU Steinhardt

Early Career Award 2024: Rebecca E. Linares

2023 Award Winners 

Lifetime Achievement Award: Patricia Gándara, UCLA

2022 Award Winners

Outstanding Dissertation Award, First Place: Lakeya Omogun [she/her], Assistant Professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture, University of Washington

Outstanding Dissertation Award, Second Place (tie): Jennifer Phuong [she/her], Visiting Assistant Professor, Swarthmore College

Outstanding Dissertation Award, Second Place (tie): Mitchell Ingram, University of Texas, Austin

Dissertation Title: Entre broma y broma la verdad se asoma: The mobilization of third grade emergent bilinguals' cultural capital around sites of humor.  

Early Career Award 2022: Maria Cioè-Peña, Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Foundations, Montclair State University

Lifetime Achievement Award: María E. Fránquiz, Professor, and Program Coordinator of Bilingual/Bicultural Studies, University of Texas at Austin

2019 Award Winners

Outstanding Dissertation Award, First Place: Laura Carolina Chávez-Moreno, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Scholar, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

Dissertation Title: A Critical Race Ethnography Examining Dual-language Education in the New Latinx Diaspora: Reinforcing and Resisting Bilingual Education’s Racial Roots

Outstanding Dissertation Award, Second Place: Laura Hamman-Ortiz, Ph. D. Postdoctoral Scholar, School of Education, University of Colorado-Boulder 

Dissertation Title: Reframing the Language Separation Debate: Language, Identity, and Ideology in Two-Way Immersion

Outstanding Dissertation Award, ThirdPlace: Idalia Nuñez, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, College of Education, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Dissertation Title: Literacies of Surveillance: Transfronterizx Children Translanguaging Identity Across Borders, Inspectors, and Surveillance

Early Career Award 2019: Claudia G. Cervantes-Soon, Associate Professor at Arizona State University

Lifetime Achievement Award: Belinda Bustos Flores, Professor and Associate Dean of Professional Preparation, Assessment, and Accreditation at the University of Texas at San Antonio

2019 Graduate Student Travel Awards ($500)
Rachel Snyder, University of Washington-Seattle
Zhongfeng Tian, Boston College
Kevin Wong, New York University (Steinhardt)
Lina Martin Corredor, University of Texas at San Antonio