PhD Candidate, Hispanic Linguistics Teaching Assistant of Spanish and Portuguese Presidential Fellow Vanessa Revheim is a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on heritage language acquisition, particularly the maintenance of Brazilian Portuguese in immigrant communities in the United States. She is interested in cross-linguistic interference resulting from language contact and the role of language attitudes in shaping the experiences of heritage speakers. With nearly 20 years of experience teaching English, Portuguese, and Spanish in Brazil, the United States, and Chile, Vanessa’s academic, teaching, and community work reflect her commitment to equitable and inclusive language education for Latiné students in the U.S. She has been actively engaged in community-based learning, serving as a teaching assistant for SPAN/LACS 4090S: Practicum in Service Learning, where she supported students’ partnerships with Spanish-speaking communities in Athens, GA. Research Research Areas: Hispanic & Romance Linguistics Research Interests: Heritage language acquisition Bilingualism Second language acquisition Grants: 2026 – Dissertation Completion Award 2026 – Franklin ASCEND Program Award 2026 – Wilson Center Graduate Research Award 2026 – The Nina Salant Hellerstein Professional Development Fund 2025 – Dolores Artau Scholarship 2025 – Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award 2024/2025 – Wilson Center Graduate Research Award 2024 – The Goizueta Foundation Fellowship – The Goizueta Foundation 2024 – LACSI Brazilian Studies Research Travel Grant 2022-2026 – UGA Presidential Fellows Award 2015/2016/2017 – Conference Travel Grant – The University of Mississippi 2013/2014 – Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at Yale University Frequently Taught Courses Courses Regularly Taught: SPAN 2001 SPAN 1110 SPAN 1001 Selected Publications Selected Publications: McLendon, J., Cunha, V. R., & Ezro-Christy, A. (2025). Variation of the inflected infinitive in Portuguese. RLLT 25, eds. Adam McBride, James Law & Willis Fails. Special Issue of Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics 11(5)/10, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/isogloss.501 Cunha, V. R., Barahona, V., & Passos, F. (2024). Negative Comments Towards Formula 1 Drivers on Twitter. In Digital Humanities Looking at the World: Exploring Innovative Approaches and Contributions to Society (pp. 15-27). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48941-9_2 Cunha, V. R. (2021) “The Effects of Derivational Morphology on Reading Comprehension: A Study with Students of L2 Portuguese.” I Congresso de Português como Língua Estrangeira na Columbia University. Conference proceedings, 201- 219.
