Annika is a doctoral student in Spanish Linguistics. She holds a BS in Biology and Spanish from St. Norbert College (2019). She studied at La Fundación José Ortega y Gasset – Gregorio Marañón in Toledo, Spain in 2018, and served as a Cultural Ambassador in the North American Cultural Ambassadors program in a primary school in El Ejido, Spain 2019-2020. She graduated with her Master’s degree in Spanish Linguistics from UW Madison in May 2022.
Her research interests include the intersections between second language acquisition, acoustic phonetics and phonology in Spanish, bilingual identity and technology-enhanced learning. Her dissertation research will investigate how learning speech sounds both shapes and is influenced by bilingual identity in the acquisition of Spanish as a second language. By integrating technology into her work, her main goal in her research is to innovate language learning strategies that support Spanish learning, foster students’ ability to explore their bilingual identity, and ultimately create opportunities for Spanish learning in and out of the classroom.