Belén Villarreal

Belén Villarreal is an Associate Professor of Spanish and Hispanic Studies at Earlham College. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and a B.A. from the University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on Spanish in the U.S., heritage language learners, and language-contact dynamics among Spanish speakers. She actively engages with the local community through volunteer work at the Richmond Latino Center and co-leads academic programs in Spain and Ecuador.

Her teaching emphasizes hands-on research projects, including student-created graphic novels, sociolinguistic analyses of local speech communities, and multimedia explorations of linguistic borders. She has directed McNair research projects addressing educational barriers faced by Hispanic low-income students. Professional memberships include the Modern Language Association (MLA), American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP), and Linguistic Society of America (LSA).

Her community-focused research extends to documenting Oaxacan Spanish in Indiana and exploring language issues in Los Angeles public schools. She advocates for linguistic diversity and integrates fieldwork into her pedagogy, offering courses on topics typically reserved for graduate study.