Hispanic Studies Faculty Focus, December 2022: Dr. Ezequiel Durand-López

Hispanic Studies Faculty Focus, December 2022: Dr. Ezequiel Durand-López

A recent graduate with a Ph.D. in Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition from Rutgers University, Dr. Durand-López also has received degrees from the Universidad Nebrija in Madrid, Spain (an M.A. in Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language) and from the Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires, Argentina (a B.A. in Linguistics and Literature).

Since joining Hispanic Studies as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2022, Ezequiel has quickly become an essential part of the lives of HISP students and faculty, masterfully co-directing (along with colleague Dr. Carmen Gallegos-Pérez) the Spanish Club, taking the Tertulia to a whole new level (something which involves Jenga, prize give-aways and, believe it or not, a llama) and designing exciting new course offerings, such as spring 2023’s SPAN 316 Applied Spanish: Spanish Language Processing–a class sure to be a hit with SPAN students who are also studying Computer Science, Psychology and Business, among other subjects.

As for his fascinating research, Dr. Durand-López has published on “Morphological processing and individual frequency effects in L1 and L2 Spanish” (in the journal, Lingua), on “A bilingual advantage in memory capacity: Assessing the roles of proficiency, number of languages acquired and age of acquisition” (in the International Journal of Bilingualism) and on the topic of “L2 within-language morphological competition during spoken word recognition” (in Language Acquisition).

In his own words…

“I am most fortunate to work at the College of Charleston, where interdisciplinary teaching is highly valued. With regard to teaching, CofC provides me with a valuable opportunity to develop and impart interdisciplinary courses that are aimed at increasing students’ professional competence in Spanish at the same time that students acquire the technical skills of their profession in either Computer Science or Psychology. Specifically, I am developing SPAN 316, Spanish Language Processing, that allows students (1) to create a Spanish corpus made up of the fundamental texts of their profession and then (2) to analyze it using methods from computational linguistics that are useful in a wide range of professional environments. Additionally, I am collaborating with the Department of Psychology developing courses on the Spanish-English bilingual mind from a cognitive standpoint. I also enjoy how supportive College of Charleston is regarding community outreach, as I am also establishing connections between regional public schools and the Department of Hispanic Studies in order to promote the professional and cognitive benefits of speaking Spanish and being bilingual. I am very pleased to be able to conduct research in an area with a growing Spanish-speaking population, and to have students who are interested in making Charleston a place where bilingualism is valued.”