Reinaldo Cabrera Pérez is a first-generation Ph.D. student in the Human Development in Context concentration at the University of California, Irvine's School of Education.
Prior to his doctoral studies, Reinaldo earned a dual Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics and Russian Studies as well as a Russian-English Translations Certificate from the University of Florida (UF).
From a young age, Reinaldo began his life-long exploration of new ways of thinking and engaging with people from different backgrounds, cultures, religions, and languages. The more he discovered about new linguistic features, the more he became intrigued and fascinated by how certain languages produce unique sounds. As a result, during his undergraduate studies at UF, he worked at the Brain, Language, and Bilingualism lab with Dr. Eleonora Rossi, where he investigated how bilinguals use their languages in different social contexts by applying social network science measures. This led to Reinaldo completing an honors thesis project titled “Connecting the Dots: Social Network approaches to capture variability across the lifespan of bilinguals and its consequences for cognition.”
Reinaldo's research interests intersect the disciplines of bilingualism, heritage and second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and childhood and young adulthood language development. Specifically, he is interested in investigating the consequences of early childhood development in young adulthood by applying different psychometric measures.
Moreover, he is actively involved in organizations that promote bilingualism, such as Bilingualism Matters in California. One of Reinaldo’s goals is to translate laboratory findings into easier-to-understand information and to create a dialogue between linguistic researchers and the general population to address the importance of language diversity and bilingualism.