Dr. Uju Anya is an Assistant professor of second language learning(Education) in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Penn State College of Education.

Dr. Uju Anya is assistant professor of second language learning in the Curriculum and Instruction Department and research affiliate with the Center for the Study of Higher Education at The Pennsylvania State University.^[1]

Previously, Dr. Anya was an assistant professor of clinical education at the University of Southern California; visiting assistant professor and faculty director of the Dartmouth College Portuguese language study abroad program in Salvador-Bahia, Brazil; and lecturer in Applied linguistics, TESOL, Portuguese, and Spanish at UCLA and Dartmouth College.

She specializes in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and second language learning with particular focus on race, gender, sexual, and social class Identities in the language classroom. She has expertise in diversity, equity, and inclusion in educational policy and Curriculum design, applied linguistics as a practice of social justice, intercultural communication, as well as service-learning and civic engagement in secondary and university-level language programs.

Dr. Anya’s most recent research project is published in her book Racialized identities in second language learning: Speaking blackness in Brazil (Routledge 2017), winner of the 2019 American Association for Applied Linguistics First Book Award recognizing a scholar whose first book represents outstanding work that makes an exceptional contribution to the field.

The book is the first single-authored volume of sociolinguistic analysis and critical examination of the African American experience in language learning.

It examines how students shape and negotiate different identities in multilingual contexts, and it proposes how a multilingual approach (e.g. translanguaging, Plurilingual practice) can be utilized for effective language pedagogy.

She holds a PhD in applied linguistics from UCLA,

an MA in Brazilian studies from Brown University, and

a BA in Romance languages from Dartmouth College.