Don Edward Walicek

Dr. Don Edward Walicek is a Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras Campus. He holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology and MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in English from the University of Puerto Rico. His research focuses on historical sociolinguistics, language contact, and creolization in Caribbean contexts such as Anguilla, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. He currently explores language ideologies and social cognition in multilingual contact scenarios, particularly regarding West Africans and the English on the Gold Coast during the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Walicek serves as editor of the Sargasso journal and has directed the Graduate Program in Linguistics. He is a 2019 Fulbright Scholar and American Council of Learned Societies fellow, and delivered the 2023 Annual Emancipation Lecture at the University of the West Indies in Anguilla. His work bridges linguistics, cultural studies, and decolonial theory, with recent projects analyzing Royal African Company archives to understand linguistic dynamics in colonial trade networks. He also contributes as a poet and translator, enriching Caribbean literary discourse.