Ofelia García

Ofelia García is Professor Emerita in the Ph.D. programs of Urban Education and of Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures (LAILAC) at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She has been Professor of Bilingual Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, Dean of the School of Education at the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University, and Professor of Education at The City College of New York. Among her best-known books are Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective; Translanguaging; Language, Bilingualism and Education (with Li Wei, 2015 British Association of Applied Linguistics Book Award recipient), The Translanguaging Classroom (with S. I. Johnson & K. Seltzer), and Educating Emergent Bilinguals (with J. Kleifgen). She has been the General Editor of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language and the co-editor of Language Policy (with H. Kelly-Holmes). García was co-principal investigator of CUNY-NYSIEB (www.cuny-nysieb.org) from its inception in 2011 until 2016. García’s extensive publication record on bilingualism and the education of bilinguals is grounded in her life experience living in New York City after leaving Cuba at the age of 11, teaching language minority students bilingually, educating bilingual and ESL teachers, and working with doctoral students researching these topics. García received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Bank Street Graduate School of Education (2016) the Charles Ferguson Award in Applied Linguistics from the Center of Applied Linguistics (2017), and the Lifetime Career Award from the Bilingual Education SIG of the American Education Research Association (2017). She was also honored with AERA’s Division G Lifetime Excellence Award for Distinguished Contributions to Social Contexts in Education Research (2020), the AERA Leadership through Research Award from the Second language Acquisition SIG (2020) and the ADFL Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession from the Modern Language Association (2022). She was elected to membership in the Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023.