Director, Portuguese Language Program; Senior Instructional Professor; Chair, RLL Language Directors Committee
Ana Maria Lima specializes in Portuguese language and literature with an emphasis on Brazilian culture. Her scholarship includes works on multimedia approaches to language acquisition and pedagogy.
Her teaching ranges from Portuguese language courses at all levels to intermediate and advanced courses on culture and literature; from language for the professions to language pedagogy courses for future teachers in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. Lima also work with students who take Independent Studies and Reading and Research classes.
In 2019 Ana Lima and her institutional partners from Michigan State University and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign received a two-year grant from the Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL) Partnership, funded by the Mellon Foundation and housed at Michigan State University.. "This cross-university initiative utilizes the established and widely recognized strengths within the Big Ten Academic Alliance to collaboratively develop an online model of LCTL instruction reflecting best practices in proficiency-oriented instruction. The project includes research in LCTL proficiency assessment, goal setting, curricular and technological innovations, as well as teacher education and professional development”.
In 2013, she initiated a partnership with Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign -- The Illinois Portuguese Language Connection. This yearly event brings together Portuguese students from these three institutions for a day of interaction and cultural activities in Portuguese. This collaboration received the 2017 Educational Initiative Award from the American Association of Teachers of Portuguese.
Currently, Lima has full-time positions at the University of Chicago.