About Me
I am Assistant Professor at the Department of Specific Didactics (Faculty of Education and Psychology), at the Universitat de Girona. Previously, I was a "Margarita Salas" (2022; through a call from Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and "Juan de la Cierva-Formación" (2023) postdoctoral researcher both at the Faculty of Education and Psychology at the Universitat de Girona.
I am a research member of the Comparative Minds Research Group (Faculty of Education and Psychology, Universitat de Girona) and of the Prosodic and Gestural Studies Group (GrEPG)(Universitat Pompeu Fabra). My research is in the field of child language acquisition and development, focusing on how gesture and speech prosody work together to support children's learning and development. I am particularly interested in how these multimodal aspects of language contribute to oral language (discourse and pragmatic abilities) and cognitive skills, as well as their educational implications—exploring how gestures and other multimodal cues can enhance teaching and learning, and how they can be applied in teacher training to improve instructional practices.
Education:
2016-2020: PhD in Language Sciences, International Mention (Dept. of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra), under the supervision of Dr. Pilar Prieto (ICREA-UPF).
2015-2016: MA in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (Dept. of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra).
2014-2015: MA in Teacher Training (Universitat de Barcelona), specializing in Catalan Language and Literature.
2010-2014: BA in Catalan Language and Literature (Dept. of Philology and Communication, Universitat de Girona)
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Latest news:
11-2025: We were interviewed — Dr. Prieto, Dr. Florit-Pons, and I — for El Periódico about our research on the importance of strengthening oral language skills from early childhood. In the interview, we discussed how promoting oral communication from the preschool years fosters literacy development and supports later academic achievement. Catalan version / Spanish version
09-2025: Our project Gestures in ACTion (G-ACT) has been awarded a Generación de Conocimiento 2024 grant by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. The project is led by Dr. Thomas Castelain (IP), in collaboration with Dr. Miquel Llorente and myself, within the Comparative Minds Research Group.
09-2025: Our two new studies—“Multimodal language adaptations in child-directed storytelling: How teachers use gestures to shape narratives for young learners” and “Shaping arguments with gestures: The impact of non-referential gesture production and observation on children's argumentative skills”—will be presented at the XI International Congress on Language Acquisition and III Congreso de la Asociación Hispanohablante para el Estudio del Trastorno del Lenguaje.
07-2025: Our two new studies—“Exploring the Impact of Character Viewpoint Gestures on Narrative Recall, Comprehension, and the Perception of Emotion and Engagement in Adults” (part of the symposium Exploring the Cognitive and Emotional Functions of Co-speech Gesture, organized by Dr. Spencer Kelly, Colgate University), and “Explaining with hands: The influence of observing versus producing non-referential gestures on children's argumentative abilities”—will be presented at the 10th Conference of the International Society for Gesture Studies.
06-2025: Our study "Multidimensional Labeling of Gesture in Communication: the M3D Proposal" first authored by Dr. Patrick L. Rohrer has been published in the journal Corpus Pragmatics (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41701-025-00197-2).