Sonia Nieto

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Professor Emerita

Sonia Nieto has devoted her professional life to questions of diversity, equity, and social justice in education. Professor Emerita in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the College of Education, University of Massachusetts, Nieto’s research focuses on multicultural and bilingual education, teacher education, and the education of students of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. She has written or edited thirteen books, including, most recently, Teachers Speak Up! Stories of Courage, Resilience, and Hope in Difficult Times, with her daughter Alicia López Nieto (2024); the seventh edition of Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education, with Patty Bode (2018); and the third revised edition of Language, Culture, and Teaching: Critical Perspectives (2018). A memoir, Brooklyn Dreams: My Life in Public Education was published by Harvard Education Press in 2015. Her first book, Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education, now in its 7th edition (the 5th through 7th editions co-authored with her friend and colleague Patty Bode). Her books are used widely in teacher education and diversity courses in the United States and abroad, and the first edition of Affirming Diversity (1992) was selected for the Museum of Education’s Education Readers’ Guide as one of the books that helped define the field of education in the twentieth century. Nieto has also written dozens of book chapters and articles in such journals as The Harvard Education Review, Educational Leadership, Language Arts, and The New Educator, among others. She was the founding editor of the Language, Culture, and Teaching Series (Routledge), comprising over two dozen titles, and is the current editor of the Visions of Practice Series (Teachers College Press). In addition, she is profiled in Inside the Academy, a free, open-source website that features archives of video interviews with America’s most distinguished and influential educational researchers. Dr. Nieto has been a Visiting Scholar at various universities in the United States, as well as in Puerto Rico, Spain, China, and South Africa. In 2011, she was elected a Laureate of Kappa Delta Pi and a Fellow of AERA, and in 2015, she was elected a member of the National Academy of Education. In 2024, she was inducted as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Nieto has also received numerous awards for her scholarly work, teaching, activism, and advocacy, including 9 honorary doctorates.