Dr. Lisa Ortiz is an Assistant Professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Leading. She is an interdisciplinary scholar with research interests in Puerto Rican migration, rural regions, and education, and Latine/x studies more broadly. Her book project examines labor practices, community formations, and knowledge-making of migrants and kin living between rural Puerto Rico and the rural Midwest amid ongoing colonial conditions.
Prior to joining the School of Education, Dr. Ortiz was a Provost Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the University of Iowa Department of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies and Latina/o/x Studies program where she developed the first working group to focus on Latina/o/x Migration and Education, funded by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. She previously served as the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Research Scholar for the “Imagining Latinidades: Articulations of National Belonging” Sawyer Seminar at the University of Iowa and as an Instructional Assistant Professor in the Illinois State University Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Dr. Ortiz has also worked in higher education administrative affairs in Puerto Rico and the United States.
In 2018, Dr. Ortiz earned her PhD in Educational Policy Studies with graduate minors in Latina/o Studies and Gender & Women’s Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She holds a Master of Art in English Education and a Bachelor in Business Administration from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus.
Dr. Ortiz has taught courses in English Education; Higher Education; Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies; Latina/o/x Studies, Social Justice; and Writing.
At the University of Pittsburgh, some courses include:
- Freedom Seminar: Latinx Migration and Education
- Freedom Seminar: Borikén Against Empire
- Cultures, Knowledge Traditions, and Social Systems of Schooling
- Research Seminar for MEd Students
- Guidance in Scholarly Practice
- Context of Education
- Writing Seminar
- Puerto Rican/Latinx migration and education
- Placemaking and Knowledge-making
- Rural education
- Examinations of ethnoracial, gender, class, citizenship, and labor dynamics in the Latinx (Rural) Midwest
- Values, devaluations, worthiness, deservingness
- Critical approaches to language learning and use
- Women of Color and Transnational Feminisms
- Critical theories and critical qualitative methods
Ortiz-Guzmán, L. (2025). Culturally connected moments and the incompleteness of ESL praxis: A Puerto Rican Migration Perspective in the Rural Midwest. In Y. Medina & E. Blair (Eds.), The social foundations of education reader: Critical essays on teaching, learning and leading in the 21st Century (2nd ed.). Peter Lang Publishers.
Fernández, L., & Ortiz-Guzmán, L. (2025). Metaphors of Latinidad: What Graduate Students Say About Being Latinx and the Pedagogical Implications for Culture and Language Learning. In I. Chavoshan & L. Fernández (Eds.), Conceptual metaphor theory in world language education: Theory, research, and pedagogy.
Ortiz-Guzmán, L. (2025). Aging in Puerto Rican placekeeping as feminist praxis, Centro Journal, 37(3), 171-198.
Ortiz-Guzmán, L. (2024). Ephemeral Puerto Rican placemaking in the Rural Midwest, American Studies, 62(4), 97-119.
Ortiz-Guzmán, L. (2023). Forced commodifications of deservingness: A teacher’s tragedy and triumph with Hurricane María, Centro Journal, 35(3), 127-151.
Ortiz-Guzmán, L. (2022). A Reflection on Puerto Rican and Latinx Relational Knowledge Making, Diálogo, 25(1), 51-63.
Hamm-Rodriguez, M., & Ortiz, L. (2022). Layering Caribbean Texts and Modalities: Relational Pedagogies for Secondary Language Arts Classrooms, archipelagos journal, 6, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.7916/archipelagos-7srx-rp29.
Principal Investigator, “Recruited Puerto Rican Teachers to the United States: Experiences of Labor Migration.” University of Pittsburgh School of Education ($49,970.22)
Principal Investigator, “Latinx Data: Historical Civil Rights Advocacy and Contemporary Intersectional Insights.” University of Pittsburgh Office of the Provost, Year of Data and Society. (Co-PIs: Gina Garcia, Michele Reid-Vazquez, & Ron Idoko. ($7,000)
- Associate Editor, Equity and Excellence in Education Journal (October 2024-Present)
- Secretary, Puerto Rico Section Executive Council, Latin American Studies Association (2021-2023)