Diego is a Ph.D. student in Hispanic Linguistics. His undergraduate research explored how different generations of pedagogy students perceive the ideal teacher, applying Conceptual Metaphor Theory to analyze their self-image and social expectations. Later, he conducted a study on the effectiveness of a task-based methodological design for teaching Chilean metaphorical expressions to Spanish L2 learners. He also investigated linguistic variation in the use of determiners with the words mamá and papá in Chilean Spanish.

His research interests include how L2 learners use metaphorical expressions, the influence of their L1 on the creation of new metaphors, linguistic variation, and lexical/semantic borrowing.