Stephen Fafulas, Ph.d.

Associate Professor of Modern Languages

Stephen Fafulas earned his Ph.D. at Indiana University and teaches courses and works on curriculum and program development at the undergraduate, M.A., and Ph.D. levels. Dr. Fafulas directs the Study of Communities, Involvement & Outreach and Linguistics (SoCIOLing) Laboratory. His research incorporates work on Spanish, English, and Amazonian languages. Inside the classroom and through the SoCIOLing Lab he trains students to observe linguistic phenomena through interdisciplinary perspectives and mentors them in designing original research. Dr. Fafulas is co-founder of the SEC Spanish Consortium (https://secspanish.org/), which promotes cross-institutional collaborations aimed at documenting Latinx communities in the U.S. South. Dr. Fafulas’s projects have been funded by organizations such as the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2022, Dr. Fafulas was awarded a Fulbright to Spain, where he gave research seminars to graduate students at the Universidad de Murcia and conducted a sociolinguistic investigation on the Ecuadorian community living there. Currently, Dr. Fafulas is working on his Faculty Laureate’s project, which includes a documentary on Mississippi’s Latinx community. 

Gender Studies -Related Research Interests: The role of gender in the changing social and linguistic practices of Latinx communities in the U.S. South, particularly in Mississippi.