Bio

Jonathan Rosa is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and, by courtesy, Departments of Anthropology, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature. Dr. Rosa’s research examines how race and language are jointly defined, experienced, and transformed across distinctive historical, geopolitical, and institutional contexts. He collaborates with schools and communities to understand these phenomena and challenge the forms of vulnerability to which they correspond. This community-based approach to research, teaching, and service reflects a vision of scholarship as a platform for imagining and enacting more just societies.

Dr. Rosa is author of the award-winning book, Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race: Raciolinguistic Ideologies and the Learning of Latinidad (2019, Oxford University Press), and co-editor of the volume, Language and Social Justice in Practice (2019, Routledge). In addition to various scholarly journals and volumes, his work on race, language, immigration, and education has appeared in popular media outlets such as The New York Times, The Nation, NPR, and Univision. Dr. Rosa has served as President of the Association of Latina/o and Latinx Anthropologists, Co-Chair of the Task Force on Language and Social Justice of the American Anthropological Association’s Society for Linguistic Anthropology and Council for Human Rights, Director of Stanford’s Program in Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies, and Co-Director of Stanford’s Center for Global Ethnography. He attained an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Linguistics and Educational Studies at Swarthmore College.

Academic Appointments

  • Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education
  • Associate Professor (By courtesy), Linguistics
  • Associate Professor (By courtesy), Anthropology
  • Associate Professor (By courtesy), Comparative Literature

Administrative Appointments

  • Co-Director, Center for Global Ethnography, Stanford University (2021 - 2023)
  • Director, Program in Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies, Stanford University (2020 - 2023)

Honors & Awards

  • Distinguished Summer Scholar, Banks Center for Educational Justice, University of Washington College of Education (2024)
  • Outstanding Book of the Year Award (Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race), American Association of Teaching and Curriculum (2022)
  • Conference Grant, "Community as a Campus: Decolonial Praxis in Chicago's Paseo Boricua", Spencer Foundation (2021)
  • First Book Award (Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race), American Association for Applied Linguistics (2021)
  • Prose Award for Excellence in Language & Linguistics (Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race), Association of American Publishers (2020)
  • Visiting Scholar, Spencer Foundation (2020)
  • Charles A. Ferguson Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Center for Applied Linguistics (2018)

Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations

  • President, Association of Latina/o and Latinx Anthropologists, American Anthropological Association (2020 - 2022)
  • Editorial Board, Current Anthropology (2019 - 2022)
  • Editorial Board, International Multilingual Research Journal (2018 - 2021)
  • Editorial Board, Equity & Excellence in Education (2017 - Present)
  • Editorial Board, Anthropology News (2016 - 2019)
  • Executive Board Member-At-Large, Association of Latina/o and Latinx Anthropologists, American Anthropological Association (2015 - 2018)
  • Advisory Committee Member, Social Science Research Council/Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program (2013 - 2017)
  • Co-Chair, Language and Social Justice Task Force, Society for Linguistic Anthropology, American Anthropological Association (2012 - 2014)
  • Executive Board Member/Secretary-Treasurer, Society for Linguistic Anthropology, American Anthropological Association (2012 - 2014)

Program Affiliations

  • Center for Latin American Studies

Professional Education

  • Ph.D., University of Chicago, Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology (2010)
  • M.A., University of Chicago, Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology (2006)
  • B.A., Swarthmore College, Linguistics and Educational Studies (2003)

Contact

  • Academic
    jdrosa@stanford.edu
    University - Faculty Department: Graduate School of Education Position: Associate Professor

Additional Info

  • Mail Code: 3096

Links

Research Interests

  • Diversity and Identity
  • Immigrants and Immigration
  • Literacy and Language
  • Poverty and Inequality
  • Race and Ethnicity
  • Sociology
  • Teachers and Teaching

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

I am currently working on two book projects through which I am continuing to develop frameworks for understanding ethnoracial, linguistic, and educational formations. The first examines racial reckonings across distinctive societal contexts by interweaving ethnographic analysis of diasporic Puerto Rican experiences and broader constructions of Latinidad that illustrate race and ethnicity as colonial and communicative predicaments. The second spotlights decolonial approaches to the creation of collective well-being through educational and societal transformations based on longstanding community collaborations in Chicago.

2024-25 Courses

Stanford Advisees

All Publications