Miriam Jorge, Ph.D.

Dr. Miriam Jorge serves as the Allen B. and Helen S. Shopmaker Endowed Professor of Education and International Studies. In this capacity, she is part of network of other endowed faculty who promote the shared mission of the Des Lee Collaborative Vision  with regard to sustained community partnership specifically with Springboard to Learning, Inc. 

Prior to joining UMSL, Dr. Jorge was a professor of Education and Applied Linguistics in Brazil. She is a sought-after lecturer and has published in relevant international journals and in various peer-reviewed books. She is the Associate Editor of the Brazilian Journal of Applied Linguistics, and a member of the editorial board of The Latin Americanist.

As the  former Associate Dean for International Affairs at a globally-focused university with 50,000 students, Dr. Miriam Jorge has experience in the internationalization of higher education. She has collaborated in the development and implemented Internationalization at Home activities, international degree programs, research, and teaching collaborations. Currently, she is developing complementary academic partnerships between UMSL, China and Brazil.

In more than two decades devoted to higher education, Dr. Miriam Jorge has dedicated herself to community engagement within transcultural and social justice-oriented perspectives. She has developed and led partnerships with schools in Brazilian urban schools, created tuition-free continuing education for public school teachers of English, shaped nationwide textbook selection, taught languages and education courses for social movements, and advocated for the implementation of Affirmative Action Measures in Brazilian higher education.

The legacies of the African Diaspora in Brazil and the United States represent one of the current interests of Dr. Jorge's research and teaching. Dr. Jorge collaborates with global scholars in the Transperipheries Research Project. In global urban peripheries, translocal and transnational flows are an integral part of social practices, allowing for transperipheral literacies related to new linguistic, cultural, and identitary configurations. In this way, Brazil and the USA have similiraties that Dr. Jorge aims at exploring through the lenses of critical transperipheral literacies.

A native of Minas Gerais, Brazil, when she is not working, Dr. Jorge enjoys watching films and listening to music. She has travelled extensively, and has visited more than a dozen countries.

Published Research Areas

• Affirmative Action
• Black Education
• Critical Race Theory
• Cross-Cultural Studies
• Global Education
• Higher Education
• International Education/Studies
• Language Acquisition
• Literacy
• Race
• Social Justice
• Student Teaching
• TESOL
• Teacher Education/Development
• Teacher Knowledge
• Teacher Research
• Urban Education