Lilliana Saldaña, Ph.D

Dr. Saldaña is a Chicana activist scholar raised in San Antonio’s Southside. Saldaña attended Boston University where she earned her bachelor’s degree in English and International Relations, with a concentration in Latin American Studies and a minor in Journalism in 1998. Shortly after completing her studies, Saldaña worked at a dual-language school in San Antonio’s Westside and earned a master’s degree in Bicultural-Bilingual Studies from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2002. During her undergraduate and graduate studies, she was involved in numerous campus-activist projects and worked in community settings, synthesizing her passion for research and social change. As a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Saldaña worked with Latina/o families to establish Nuestro Mundo, the first dual-language school in the city, and Formando Lazos, community development project with Latina immigrant mothers. She earned a doctoral degree in Human Development and Family Studies, with a minor in Chicana/o families, schools, and communities, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010. Her dissertation—“¡De mi barrio no me voy!: The identity and consciousness of Mexican American teachers at a dual-language school—examines the life histories of Raza teachers and the ways in which they transform, negotiate and reproduce the culture of schooling in San Antonio, Texas.