People

Anna Knall

Ph.D. Student

Anna Knall is a PhD student in the Linguistics track of the Romance Languages and Literatures program at UC Berkeley. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Hispanic Linguistics and Political Science (2024) from the University of California, Berkeley, where she completed a senior thesis on grammatical gender assignment strategies among Spanish-English bilinguals during code-switching. Her current research interests focus on sociolinguistic aspects within diaspora Romanian communities, particularly how contact between Romanian and other Romance varieties influences the phonetic and morphosyntactic...

Angeli Valiente

Ph.D. Student

Angeli Valiente Franchini is a PhD student and a Chancellor Fellow in the Hispanic Languages and Literatures program. She completed a B.A. at UC Berkeley with majors in Comparative Literature and in Spanish and Portuguese (Highest Honors), along with a minor in Creative Writing. As an undergraduate, she was awarded the Tollefson Prize for her nonfiction piece “My Peruvian Face” (Ellipsis Art & Literature), which informed her honors thesis. Her research led her to the Amazon Jungle where she examined how national hegemonic narratives conceal the systemic oppression of minority groups...

Anahit Manoukian

Ph.D. Candidate

Anahit Manoukian is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese with a Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. Her research and teaching bridge the early modern and modern periods, with a particular emphasis on the long eighteenth century, identity and belonging, nation-building, imperial and intellectual history, transatlantic and comparative studies, and geopolitics.

Her dissertation “From Subjects to Citizens: The Construction of Civic Identity in Spain” traces the emergence of civic consciousness in Spain from its...

Ana Luiza Kehdi

Ph.D. Student

Ana Luíza is a PhD student in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work is situated in literary and cultural studies, with interests in twentieth-century and contemporary Brazilian literature and culture, Indigenous literatures, Ecocriticism, and Theories of Capitalism and Modernity. She holds an MA in Literary Theory and History, and a BA in Languages and Literatures from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil.


During her master’s degree, funded by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), she...

Ana Claudia Lopes

Ph.D. Student

Ana Claudia Simão de Oliveira Lopes is a Ph.D. student in Spanish and Portuguese Literatures and in the Critical Theory Program. She completed a B.A. in Comparative Literature at Berkeley, graduating with Highest Distinction in General Scholarship, and was awarded the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Fellowship for outstanding academic achievements. While completing her degree, she worked as a Research Apprentice on a project about pilgrimages in the Northeast of Brazil and wrote a thesis on comparative language structures in the works of Brazilian authors Osman Lins and Clarice Lispector. During the...

Alejandra Decker

PhD Candidate

Alejandra Decker is a Ph.D candidate in Hispanic Languages & Literatures and a Chancellor's Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research is on 19th century Latin American and Latinx literatures, science, and technology, with a special focus on mining literature and scientific writing in postcolonial Mexico. She has taught Spanish language and literature courses for both heritage speakers and foreign language learners.

Sebastião Edson Macedo

Graduate Advisor

PORTFOLIO: Graduate admission information and procedures, fellowships, student guidance, academic progress, exam assistance, degree completion, committees, Graduate Division policies and procedures.

Sebastiao Edson Macedo holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures with an emphasis on Luso-Brazilian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. MA in Portuguese and African Literatures at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. He has published translations of poetry, and articles on representations of marginality and poverty in Brazilian literature. As a...

Gregory Pollet-Young

Department Manager

PORTFOLIO: Management of department staff, budget, accounting & finances, events, grants management, facilities, websites and general operations.

Gregory earned a master's degree in business administration from Montpellier Business School (France), in partnership with Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola (Lima, Peru).

Miriam Hernandez Rodriguez

Lecturer, Director of the Spanish Language Program

Dr. Hernández-Rodríguez received her M.A. in Hispanic Studies with a concentration in applied linguistics from the University of Illinois at Chicago where she was a recipient of two teaching awards. She obtained her Ph.D. in Spanish Linguistics with a designated emphasis in Second Language Acquisition from the University of California, Davis (2011). Throughout her career, she has worked with Chicago’s Heritage Language Teacher CORPS teaching, training, and evaluating graduate student teachers. She has collaborated in the design and implementation of the bilingual teacher preparation...

Dru Dougherty

Professor Emeritus