María Rosa Brea-Spahn
Clinical Associate Professor; Director, Bilingual Extension Track
Communicative Sciences and Disorders
212-998-5593
María Rosa Brea-Spahn, Ph.D., CCC-SLP (ella, she, her/s), is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders. Dr. Brea-Spahn joined NYU Steinhardt in Fall 2017 as the inaugural Director of the Bilingual Extension Track. She graduated with an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Cognitive Neural Sciences and a minor in Language Science from the University of South Florida’s Department of Psychology. Prior to and while obtaining her doctorate, she practiced as a bilingual, certified Speech-Language Therapist in school-based settings and was employed as a Clinical Instructor responsible for training and supervising graduate students with varying levels of expertise.
Dr. Brea-Spahn is a teacher-scholar whose work has been centered at the intersection of multilingualism and disability. She teaches about and implements culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogical practices in her courses, as these are aligned with her overarching commitments to critical inquiry, reflexive praxis, and the redistribution of power in classroom spaces, in a way that remains representative of her students’ brilliant voices. Her classroom and community collaborations focus on researching the impact of standardized linguistic ideologies in speech-language practices, sustaining variability in languaging in the classroom, and co-envisioning a path for linguistic liberation.
Her dedication to student-centered teaching, social justice activism, and community engagement have received multiple accolades. In 2015, Dr. Brea-Spahn was selected for the University of South Florida's Provost Community Engaged Faculty Award. In 2020, she received the prestigious NYU Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award. She is also the recipient of the 2021 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)'s Certificate of Recognition for Special Contributions in Multicultural Affairs. And in 2022, she received the NYU Steinhardt Teaching Excellence Award.
Selected Publications
- Brea-Spahn, M.R., & Soto-Boykin, X. (in press, 2025). Imagining liberated languaging in early childhood with pre-service speech-language practitioners. In M. Beneke & H. Love (Eds.), Beyond compliance in early childhood education. Teacher's College Press.
- Silliman, E. R., Bahr, R., Danzak, R., & Brea-Spahn, M. R. (2024). Finding strengths in the disciplinary writing of students with learning disabilities. Special Issue: Innovations in language and literacy for children and adolescents with language disorders. Topics in Language Disorders, 44 (2), 111. 130. https://doi.org/10.1097/TLD.0000000000000339
- Brea-Spahn, M.R., & Fabiano, L. (2023). Introduction to the forum: Reflect, reframe and re-imagine SLP. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools.
- Brea-Spahn, M. R., & Bauler, C. V. (2023). Where do you anchor your beliefs? An invitation to interrogate dominant ideologies of language and languaging in Speech-Language Pathology. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_LSHSS-22-00135
- *Hussain, F. N., Padía, L., Brea, M. R., & Sajnani, N. (2023). Confronting Pathology by Revealing a Critical Landscape in Communication Sciences and Disorders: A Scoping Review Protocol. Journal of Critical Study of Communication and Disability, 1(2), 53-68. https://doi.org/10.48516/jcscd_2023vol1iss2.30
- *Hussain, F. N., Padía, L., Brea, M. R., & Sajnani, N. (2023). Confronting Pathology by Revealing a Critical Landscape in Communication Sciences and Disorders: A Scoping Review. Journal of Critical Study of Communication and Disability, 1(2), 69-105. https://doi.org/10.48516/jcscd_2023vol1iss2.10
- Soto-Boykin, X., Brea-Spahn, M. R., Pérez, S., & McKenna, M. (2023). A critical analysis of state-level policies impacting racialized emergent bilinguals suspected or labeled as dis/abled. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_LSHSS-22-00137
- Nair, V. K., Khamis, R., Ali, S., Aveledo, F., Biedermann, B., Blake, O., Brea-Spahn, M.R.... & Zisk, A. H. (2023). Accent modification as a raciolinguistic ideology: A commentary in response to Burda et al. (2022). Journal of Critical Study of Communication & Disability, 1(1), 105-112.
- Yu, B., Nair, V. K., Brea-Spahn, M. R., Soto-Boykin, X., Privette, C., Sun, L., ... & Hyter, Y. D. (2022). Gaps in Framing and Naming: Commentary to “A Viewpoint on Accent Services”. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 31 (4), 1-6.
- Dunn Davidson, M. D., & Brea-Spahn, M.R. (2022). Literacy in two languages. In B. Goldstein and B. Conboy (Eds.), Bilingual language developments and disorders in Spanish-English speakers (3rd Ed.). Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing.
- Nair, V.K.K., & Brea-Spahn, M.R. (2021). Reimagining Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Communication Sciences and Disorders. Medium.
- Lindsay, K.T., Gardner, K., & Brea, M. R. (2021). Using culturally responsive research to respond to a global public health emergency: The case of the Zika Virus in Saint Lucia, West Indies. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups (SIG 17). https://oi.org/10.1044/2020_PERSP-19-00140
- Brea-Spahn, M. R., Frisch, S., & Bryant, J. (2020). Wordlikeness and nonword repetition in Spanish-speaking bilingual children. In Li Fangfang, K. Pollock, & R. Gibb, (Eds.), Research in child second language acquisition: Towards an integrated understanding. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing.
*doctoral/ graduate student