BA, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife
MA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
PhD, University of New Mexico
Dr. Ferreira's research interests encompass language contact situations, Spanish and Portuguese linguistics, Creole language studies, Phonetics and Phonology. She is especially interested in the differences and similarities between Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Her doctoral dissertation was a comparative study of the plural morpheme in Brazilian Portuguese and Caribbean Spanish and its purported African imprint. Since arriving on campus, she has taught Portuguese to learners of Azorean background, and has expanded her research into the issues that concern Heritage Language learning. Dr. Ferreira incorporates her research into her teaching by fostering respect for social and regional dialects in all her language classes.