Marjorie Faustich Orellana Session II Chair
Triaging Catastrophic Migrations

Marjorie Faulstich Orellana is Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and  Associate Director of the Center for the Study of International Migration at UCLA. She directs an afterschool program that connects theory to practice and serves as a site for introducing undergraduates and Teacher Education students to the field of education, connecting elementary school children with college students, and conducting research on language and literacy practices. Her new book, Immigrant Children in Transcultural Spaces: Language, Literacy and Love, examines the translingual, transliterate and transcultural learning that happens in this space. Orellana’s research more generally centers on the experiences of immigrant youth in urban schools and communities. Her explorations of their work as language and culture brokers is summarized in her 2009 book, Translating Childhoods: Immigrant Youth and Cultures. She has also led a team in designing curriculum that leverages language brokering experience for the cultivation of academic literacies in school. She has published in an interdisciplinary array of journals including American Anthropologist, Harvard Educational Review, Social Problems, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Reading Research Quarterly, and Linguistics in Education, and is a columnist for the Huffington Post.