Kristina Cordero
Literacy professor in Spanish and English
I am a cross-disciplinary professional working on projects in education, technology, literacy and literature in the US, South America, the UK and Europe. I hold a BA in Spanish literature (from Harvard) and a PhD in computer science (from Universidad Católica de Chile), for which I and a team created reading-and-writing apps based on a children’s book I wrote. Since completing the PhD I work on projects that connect research with practice, international trends with local knowledge, arts with sciences and, ultimately, the human with the technological.
Most of my work falls into these four categories:
- I conduct research (for clients, for academic projects) on topics ranging from digital literacy practices and libraries to metacognition and neurodiversity in educational contexts. I present my research through peer-reviewed papers, whitepapers, and presentations that I tailor for the audience in question.
- I advise edtech startups and accelerators on how to use research and logic models to tell their stories and evidence impact.
- I lead tech-enhanced translation and editorial projects, having translated over 30 books and collaborated with international teams on many literary and art book projects.
- I teach, mostly literature and translation, and I am constantly testing out ways to use technology and multimodal means to enhance my teaching and my students’ learning about literature and narratives in different languages (Spanish and English primarily).
In all these projects, I think hard about striking the right balance between human intelligence and technological assistance. My multi-disciplinary and-cultural experiences have been key here. My work in the arts has given me insight into the nature of creative endeavours — and what is essentially human about them. My shift into computer science has taught me the language and value of data, and the stories they can tell. Living in different places and working in different disciplines has made me sensitive, too, to the different ways people think, work and communicate.
