Rena Torres Cacoullos

Rena Torres Cacoullos is a Liberal Arts Professor of Spanish and Linguistics at Pennsylvania State University, serving as Interim Head of the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese starting July 2025. She holds a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics from the University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on language variation, grammaticalization, and bilingualism, particularly in Spanish-English contact contexts. Key contributions include studies on code-switching constraints and the Variable Equivalence hypothesis, challenging assumptions about grammatical convergence in bilingual communities.

Her work combines quantitative corpus analysis with sociolinguistic theory, emphasizing prosodic boundaries in code-switching and structural priming effects. She has authored influential books such as Bilingualism in the Community and edited volumes like The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Syntax. Professional activities include grants analyzing bilingual clause structure and computational metrics for intonation-based code-switching analysis.