Dr. Luis Gonçalves

Biography

Luis Gonçalves holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages with a Minor in Communication Studies and a Certificate in Cultural Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He joined Princeton University’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese in Fall 2010, coordinating the Portuguese Program and teaching language and Cultural Studies at Columbia University. His academic work focuses on Portuguese-speaking cultures and transatlantic connections during the 19th and 20th centuries. His research explores social movements, literature, popular culture, and film in Lusophone countries, as well as questions of identity, diaspora, migration, and cultural expressions within Portuguese-American communities. Professor Gonçalves has been invited to speak at numerous national and international events and has organized conferences, panels, and presentations in the United States, Portugal, Brazil, and Canada. He conducts research on Language Acquisition methodologies in teaching Portuguese as a foreign language and offers regular training for instructors in Portuguese. His leadership roles include serving as Acting Director of the Portuguese Program at Princeton for 2024-2025, President of the American Organization of Teachers of Portuguese from 2015 to 2023, Executive Director of the annual Encontro Mundial sobre o Ensino de Português from 2012 to 2023, President of the National Council of Commonly Taught Languages from 2020 to 2023, and currently as Director of the Middlebury Portuguese School since 2022. He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Portuguese Language Journal.

Research Interests