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 whose work is grounded in education, Latinx/a/o Studies, (im)migration, race, ethnicity, and gender. Her book project, “Saberes Boricuas: 21st Century Migrant Placemaking at Work, Church, and School,” focuses on knowledge production among intergenerational migrants moving between rural Puerto Rico and the rural Midwest from an intersectional, decolonial, and contemporary perspective.
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.
Instructional Interests
Dr. Ortiz has taught courses in Education, 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:
- Research Seminar in Education
- Freedom Seminar: Latinx Migration & Education
Scholarly Interests
- Relationship between Puerto Rican & Latinx migration and education in rural regions
- Examinations of ethnoracial, gender, class, citizenship, and labor dynamics in the Latinx (Rural) Midwest
- Rural education
- Knowledge production
- Values, devaluations, worthiness, deservingness
- Language ideologies
- Women of Color and Transnational Feminisms
- Critical theories and critical qualitative methods
Featured Publications
- 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.
- Ortiz, L. (2018). Invited blog post: Undocumented intelligence within hyperdocumentation: Tips for educators, stories for all, and urgent questions about (im)migration realities, Response to Dra. Aurora Chang’s talk: Undocumented to hyperdocumented: The power of documentation Office of Community College Research and Leadership, https://occrl.illinois.edu/our-products/voices-and-viewpoints-detail/current-topics/2018/02/06/undocumented-intelligence.
- Ortiz, L. (2017). Review of book Negotiating Latinidades, understanding identities within space, by Quinn-Sánchez, K. (Ed.). Latino Studies, (15)3, 389-391. http://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-017-0084-9.
Awards and Honors
American Educational Research Association-Spencer Minority Meta-Analysis Fellow (2020)
Migration, Mobility, and Sustainability: Caribbean Studies Digital Humanities Institute Fellow, Digital Library of the Caribbean, University of Florida and Partners (2019-2020)
Engagement, Partnerships, and Professional Service
Executive Council - Secretary, Latin American Studies Association, Puerto Rico Section