Departmental News

Posted:  Apr 17, 2026 - 12:00pm

Dr. Catherine R. Rhodes, Associate Professor of Linguistic Anthropology, has received a 2026 UNM Globally-Engaged Research Award. This award is in recognition of Dr. Rhodes’ research efforts toward internationalizing linguistic anthropology. In particular it recognizes her work in creating curricular content and scholarship for teaching linguistic anthropology at the undergraduate level in Spanish, including the first edition of an internationally best-selling introductory textbook in this field: El Lenguaje Vivo: Una Introducción a la Antropología Lingüística.

Through a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Fellowship (2024-2025), Dr. Rhodes conducted research on cross-cultural differences in teaching and learning between the U.S. and Mexico and created and pilot tested an undergraduate course in linguistic anthropology in Spanish. She has since begun to offer this bilingual (English-Spanish) course online jointly between UNM and the Autonomous University of Yucatan (UADY) in Mexico. She is developing a similar graduate course which she hopes to incorporate into a Spanish-language specialization credential in this field which will be developed via a global network of Spanish-speaking linguistic anthropologists which she is convening together with faculty from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) and The Ohio State University. This group is also developing a public-facing, free repository of Spanish-language linguistic anthropological scholarship.

Dr. Rhodes’ globally-engaged research supports UNM’s mission given that New Mexico is the state with the largest number of Spanish-speakers per-capita in the U.S. It provides training across the curriculum in Spanish in addition to providing access to global programs at a time when many students cannot travel to the U.S. It stands to place UNM on the map as a leader in linguistic anthropology globally.