Petra E. Avillan León, Ph.D. – researcher
Petra E. Avillan León, assistant professor in the English Department at the Faculty of General Studies of the University of Puerto Rico, earned a Ph.D. in Literature and Linguistics of the Anglophone Caribbean from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. Her dissertation entitled The View of the Speaker and the Perception of Threat in the Development of Language Endangerment Typologies focuses on the perception of speakers of endangered languages. Her publications include “Trinidadian French Creole an Endangered Language of the Caribbean; Should we care? “(2012), Creoles and Acts of Identity: Convergence and Multiple voicing in the Atlantic Creole (2013), and The Importance of Including the Perception of the Speakers in Language Endangerment Situations: Lessons Learned (2016), among others. In 2016 she coordinated the “1st Creole and Endangered Languages Colloquium” at the College of Humanities of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus.
Yolanda Rivera Castillo, Ph.D. – co-researcher
Yolanda Rivera Castillo, is a full profesor at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras Campus. She obtained her academic formation at the universities of Puerto Rico, Wisconsin-Madison and California Davis. Most of her publications are related to Linguistics, although she also has published poetry. Her articles can be found in professional journals such the Journal of Portuguese and Spanish Lexically-Based Creoles (2013), STUF (Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung) (2006) y Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages (2004). She has also published books related to her field. The most recent being Sonority Across Languages (2016) and the “Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica” (2016). Her book, Papiamentu Structural Features, was published by the Dutch editorial Brill. Her research covers topics of phonology, syntax, and the documentation of creole languages.