Anna Babel is a sociolinguist and a linguistic anthropologist. Her research focuses on the relationship between language and social categories, particularly in settings of language contact. She has carried out long-term research in the Santa Cruz valleys of Bolivia, the setting of her ethnography, Between the Andes and Amazon. Her most recent work considers how we become aware of different ways of speaking, and conversely how our knowledge and beliefs about language influence the way that we speak. In addition to these areas of expertise, she teaches on the role of language in the construction of US and Latino/a/x identities. 

Select Publications

2026. Namboodiripad, Savithry, Ethan Kutlu, Anna Babel, Molly Babel, Melissa Baese-Berk, Paras Bassuk, Adeli Block, Matthew Carlson, Andrew Cheng, Philip Comboths, Rachel Hayes-Harb, Anne Frederiksen, Kelly Kendro, Elena Koulidobrova, Chien-Jer Lin, Zicheng Lin, Alicia, Luque, Kevin McGowan, John Muegge, and Kelly Wright. Finding our ROLE: How and why to reframe essentialist approaches to language. Cognition 271: 106444.

2025. Babel, Anna M., Kevin McGowan, and Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Eds. New approaches to awareness and control.  Thematic issue for the Journal of Sociolinguistics. 

2025. Moore, Leslie C., Anna Babel, Nikole D. Patson, Laura Wagner, Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Cynthia Clopper, Rachel Holt, Shari Speer. Language science and intergenerational learning in a science center. Journal of Museum Education, pp. 1-15.

2024.  Babel, Anna M. and Ashlee Dauphinais. “Whisper Networks and Woke Networks.”  Invited contribution to the Routledge Handbook of Feminist Anthropology.

2024. Grammon, Devin and Anna M. Babel. Decentering the colonial native speaker. Language 100(3):504-551.

2021. Babel, Anna M. and Mark A. Sicoli, Editors. Contact, Structure, and Change: A Festschrift for Sarah G. Thomason.  Ann Arbor: Maize Press (University of Michigan Publications).  Full open-access publication.

2018. Between the Andes and the Amazon: Language and Social Meaning in Bolivia.  University of Arizona Press. 

2016. Editor, Awareness and Control in Sociolinguistic Research. Cambridge University Press: New York/Cambridge. Reviewed in Journal of Sociolinguistics (22:1).  Re-released in paperback April 2019.

Teaching

Language Variation in Spanish                                     US Latino Languages and Communities  

Spanish in the US: Language as Social Action            Studies in Spanish Synchronic Linguistics

Language Contact in the Spanish-speaking world        Qualitative methods

Public Interventions

• 2021. “What does ‘native speaker’ mean, anyway?” Published on Language Log, May 29^th, 2021.  Authors: Devin Grammon, Anna Babel.
• 2021. “Language Science, Pandemic edition.”  Published on the Society for Linguistic Anthropology blog, May 13^th, 2021.  Authors: Anna Babel, Shawntel Barreiro, Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Luana Lamberti Nunes, Leslie Moore, Laura Wagner.
• 2021. Public Outreach and Community Service Award from the Society of Linguistic Anthropology from the Society of Linguistic Anthropology.
• 2020. Who counts as a speaker of a language? TEDxOhioStateUniversity TEDx talk; Picked up by TEDx YouTube channel, March 2020. Picked up by national TED channel, December 2020 (total 1.5 million views as of 2/25/22).
• 2020. Interviewed by Mother Jones and the Columbus Free Press for newspaper articles on the death of Oscar Lopez Acosta. Contributed to background for Frontline article.
  • Mother Jones: A Honduran Man Has Died of COVID-19 After Leaving an ICE Jail Plagued by the Virus
  • Columbus Free Press:  Ohio’s first ICE detainee dies from COVID-19
  • Frontline:  How ICE Data Undercounts COVID-19 Victims
• 2019. Interviewed on PBS NewsHour for segment on Ohio DACA students. For DACA students, it’s hard to focus on a bright future when faced with deportation fears
• 2019. Interviewed for Reader's Digest story on how to pronounce acaí. How Do You Pronounce Acai, Anyway?
• 2019. Author interview for CaMP (Culture, Media, and Performance) Anthropology Blog. Interviewed by Diego Arispe Bazan, published on 4/1/2019. See Anna Babel on her new book, Between the Andes and the Amazon .
• 2019. What do Spanish, Quechua, and DACA have in common? A linguist named Babel. Voices of Excellence podcast, OSU College of Arts & Humanities, interviewed by Dr. David Staley.
• 2019. Supporting DACA students at Ohio State. OhioHabla podcast, interviewed by Dr. Elena Foulis.
• 2018. The invisible walls of the whisper network. Invited column for Anthropology News, published May 10, 2018.
• 2018. Español en los Estados Unidos. OhioHabla podcast, interviewed by Dr. Elena Foulis.