Lecturer
Lyana was born in Huacho, Perú and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago where she learned English through ESL classes in school. Lyana has taught first year-writing for multilingual students at the University of New Hampshire and Penn State as well as content courses like Global Englishes and intensive English courses like intermediate writing/reading and listening/speaking at Penn State. In her teaching practices, Lyana incorporates evidence-based pedagogy and her lived experiences as a multilingual immigrant student.
Additionally, Lyana’s experiences growing up with an undocumented status influence her collaborative and action-oriented research with illegalized immigrants. Her current research focuses on the relationships between immigrant intersectional identities, illegalized immigrant reclaimant narratives, and mainstream discourses on immigration. The current project coming out of her research is an “Illegalized Repository,” a virtual space to platform diverse and minoritized illegalized immigrant voices and stories.