Rebecca Damari

Dr. Rebecca Rubin Damari is the Co-Director of Professionals in Education Advancing Research and Language Learning (PEARLL), and Director of Research at the National Foreign Language Center (NFLC) at the University of Maryland. In these roles, Rebecca directs program evaluation and impact studies for PEARLL and STARTALK, including annual surveys as well as special projects examining the effects of 2020’s remote learning on language teaching, and the long-term impact of STARTALK on student and teacher participants. Other recent projects have addressed the need for a multilingual workforce as well as questions of demographics and equity in language immersion programs. Rebecca’s research has appeared in Foreign Language Annals and the Journal of Sociolinguistics, as well as in independent reports published by NFLC. She has presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) conference, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) convention, the East Coast Organization of Language Testers (ECOLT) conference, the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL) conference, and the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) meeting. Rebecca earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics from the Linguistics Department at Georgetown University, with research focusing on how individuals navigate cultural differences to communicate effectively with each other and to display their identities through their communication.