Soria Colomer

Credentials

Ph.D., Language and Literacy Education (TESOL & World Language Education)

University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia

M.A., Curriculum & Instruction 

University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi

B.A., Economics and Spanish

Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi

Biography and Scholarship 

Soria Elizabeth Colomer is an Associate Professor of Bilingual Education in the College of Education at Oregon State University and Chair of the ESOL, Dual Language, and Literacy Program. Her research examines bilingual teachers’ experiences with language, culture, and migration across generations and communities, and how these experiences shape their identities and practice. Her current work draws on qualitative methodologies to explore how teachers’ transnational knowledge is taken up within schools, teacher education programs, and broader educational systems, while also examining how these contexts support and sustain transnational ways of knowing. Across her scholarship, she advances a critical biliteracies framework to examine the intersections of race, language, literacy, and power in bilingual education. 

Colomer was named the inaugural Patricia Valian Reser Faculty Scholar in the College of Education (2022–2025) and an Ecampus Research Fellow (2022–2024), which supported research on bilingual teacher development in cross-border contexts and a collaborative study of in-service dual language teachers completing an online certification program. Building on this work, she continues to collaborate with graduate students and research faculty to examine how transnational expertise circulates across contexts, particularly among international visiting teachers in dual language programs. Since her sabbatical (2023–2024), she has sustained a research–practice partnership with bilingual educators and administrators in Copán, Honduras, extending her work on transnational teacher development and cross-border collaboration. She serves on the Oregon Association for Bilingual Education Board.

Prior to working in higher education, Colomer taught K–12 Spanish and ESOL, including in migrant education settings, and was a Mississippi Teacher Corps Fellow and National Board Certified Teacher in World Languages. These experiences, coupled with her identity as a child of Honduran immigrants, continue to inform her research on bilingual teacher development.

Selected Publications

Colomer, S. E., Babino, A., Álvarez, A., & Chaparro, S. E. (in press). Introduction to the special issue: On healing linguistic wounds. Journal of Language, Identity & Education.

Babino, A., Colomer, S. E., Álvarez, A., & Chaparro, S. E. (in press). Healing the Bilingual Bodymindspirit: A Case for Theorizing Emotion in Critical Biliteracies. Journal of Language, Identity & Education.

Chaparro, S. E., Babino, A., & Colomer, S. E. (in press). Addressing hegemonic and raciolinguistic perspectives of bilingualism in the U.S. among bilingual teacher educators and teacher candidates. In D. Palmer, B. Caldas, L. Herrera, & C. Faltis (Eds.), Handbook of bilingual teacher education.

Colomer, S. E., Cole, C., Kibler, A., Patiño-Cabrera, N., Mejia-Hutchison, V., & Thompson, K. (2025). “Another way of seeing bilingualism”: Fostering critical consciousness among dual language bilingual education teachers. TESOL Journal, 16(3).

Colomer, S.E., Cole, C., Patiño-Cabrera, N., Kibler, A., & Mejia-Hutchinson, V. (2025). Bilingual in-service teachers’ perspectives of an online dual language certification program. [White Paper]. Oregon State University Ecampus Research Unit.

Díaz Lara, G., Dodge, T., Colomer, S. E., & López-Cevallos, D. F. (2024). Navigating and resisting educational systems: The experiences of Latinx families in rural Oregon. Behavioral Sciences, 14(10), 863–878. 

Qin, K., Colomer, S. E., Yu, L., & Cole, C. (2024). Negotiating Racialized Discourses and Navigating Racism in U.S. Schools: Understanding Chinese Immigrants’ Parenting Identities and Practices Through an AsianCrit Lens. Urban Education, 59(6), 1964-1993.

Thompson, K., Colomer, S.E., & Hakuta, K. (2023). Education and Bilingualism. The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis edited by Michael Handford and James Paul Gee.

Chang-Bacon, C. K., & Colomer, S. E. (2022). Critical biliteracies: The mutually reinforcing endeavors of Freirean criticality and bilingualism. In S. R. Barros & L. de Oliveira (Eds.), Paulo Freire and multilingual education: Theoretical approaches, methodologies, and empirical analyses in language and literacy (pp. 27–41). Routledge.

Bacon, C., & Colomer, S. E. (2022). Biliteracy as property. Journal of Literacy Research, 54(2), 182–207.

Colomer, S. E., & Bacon, C. (2019). Seal of biliteracy graduates get critical: Incorporating critical biliteracies in dual language programs and beyond. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 63(3), 291–300.

Colomer, S. (2019). Double Binds and (Re)Imagined Storylines: Las Obligaciones of Being a Latina Teacher in a New Latinx Community. Theory Into Practice, 58(3), 273–281.

Colomer, S. E. (2018). Understanding racial literacy through acts of (un)masking: Latinx teachers in a new Latinx diaspora community. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 255–271. 

Bauer, E., Presiado, V., & Colomer, S. E. (2017). Writing through partnership: Fostering translanguaging in children who are emergent bilinguals. Journal of Literacy Research, 10-37.                                                                            

Pearson, T. M., Wolgemuth J. R., & Colomer, S. E. (2015). Spiral of decline or “Beacon of Hope:” Stories of school choice in a dual language school. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(25), 1-24. 

Colomer, S. E. (2015). Positioning Spanish teachers as ad hoc ESOL teachers. TESOL Quarterly, 49(2), 393–402. 

Harklau, L., & Colomer, S. E. (2015). Defined by language: The role of foreign language departments in Latino education in southeastern new diaspora communities. In E. T. Hamann, S. Wortham, & E. G. Murillo, Jr. (Eds.), Revisiting Education in the New Latino Diaspora: One of Twelve and Rising. Charlotte, NC: Info Age Press.

Colomer, S. E. (2014). Latina Spanish high school teachers’ negotiation of capital in new Latino communities. Bilingual Research Journal, 37(3), 349-365. 

Colomer, S. E. (2010). Dual role interpreters: Spanish teachers in new Latino communities. Hispania, 93, 491-504. 

Colomer, S. E., & Harklau, L. (2009). Spanish teachers as impromptu translators and liaisons in new Latino communities. Foreign Language Annals, 42, 658-672.