Lyris Wiedemann

I have been the director of the Portuguese language program at Stanford since 1996. I earned a B.A. in Romance Languages, a specialization in Linguistics, and an M.A. in the teaching of languages and literature in my native Brazil (PUC-RS and UFRGS). I received an M.A. in Linguistics and a Ph.D.in Education from Stanford. Before joining the Language Center at Stanford, I was a professor of Linguistics and Education at two major universities in Brazil (UFRGS and PUC-RS) for several years, and the associate director of the UC-Berkeley Portuguese Program for nine years. I am a certified ACTFL OPI. OPIC and WPT tester, a SOPI rater by CAL, and a translator by the American Translators Association. In 2005, I was awarded the prestigious Baker Fellowship by Middlebury College, and in 2009, the AATSP Maria Isabel Abreu prize for the best research article on the teaching of Portuguese. My research interests include sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, acquisition of cognate languages, development of cultural competence, and translation. I am one of the creators of the international symposium on Portuguese for Spanish Speakers: Acquisition and Teaching, which had its fifth edition in 2014, and an author and editor of several scholarly articles and books.