My publications and presentations reflect a sustained commitment to advancing the understanding of literacies within second language education. This body of work looks at the complex links between digital technologies, multimodal communication, and critical approaches, consistently aiming to foster social justice and advocacy. My scholarship, often rooted in insights from the Global South, seeks to bridge theoretical knowledge with transformative pedagogical praxis, contributing to both academic discourse and real-world educational change.

Click on the player below for an audio overview (via NotebookLM)

The Handbook of Critical Literacies (2021)

It will take work as we learn to value and centre Africana, Arab, and Muslim, Asian, Latinx, Native American, and Indigenous epistemologies. And we must learn to move beyond the White gaze and produce critical and socially just literacy. Is this possible? Is it realistic in modern society?

It is absolutely possible, as described in and across multiple chapters in an outstanding compendium of critical literacy theorising by Pandya et al.’s (2022) The Handbook of critical literacies. The transnational group of editors, founders of the Transnational Critical Literacy Network present a compilation (50 chapters) of critical literacy and social justice scholarship. They enhance our understanding of critical theorising, as they acknowledge their ‘deliberate attempt to broaden and diversify the scholars who might find intellectual homes under a revitalized critical literacy umbrella’ (p. x). Building and expanding the history, traditions, and theories within critical literacies along with acknowledging current knowledge and theoretical approaches; they offer a definition of critical literacies as ‘literate practices individuals need in order to survive and thrive in the world, foregrounding the concept that information and texts are never neutral; they afford the ability to produce powerful texts that address injustices and our lived worlds’ (p. 3).

​Importantly, they highlight, ‘we intentionally draw on multiple critical epistemologies, including those of European, Black, and Indigenous thinkers from the Global South and the Global North’ (p. 3). In so doing, they enlarge the scope of critical theorising and reflexively note the shifting meaning of critical literacy as traditionally dominated by scholars from the Global North, ‘especially by white, Anglophone discourses’ (Mora et al., 2022, p. 466). The traditional framework ‘sometimes obscures attentions that scholars and non-Anglophone regions face when they move across the different languages they use to talk about literacy’ (p. 466). The editors and authors represent multiple geo-political spaces as they engage and re-imagine critical literacy and literacy approaches, assessments, curriculum, instruction, methods, praxis, and theories as inclusive of cultures, ethnicities, genders, languages, and races.
(Excerpt from Willis, A. I. (2023). Critical literacies: Ever‐evolving. Literacy, 57(2).  https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12331)

Links:

• ​Routledge
• Bookshop.org

Click on the player below for an audio overview (via NotebookLM)

​Translanguaging and Multimodality as Flow, Agency, and a New Sense of Advocacy in and from the Global South (2024)

Provocative and disruptive, this book explores the possibilities of mixing and remixing definitions, epistemological standpoints, and methodological options and shows the continuing growth found in translanguaging and multimodality research worldwide. It will be a key resource for practitioners, researchers, and scholars of education and pedagogy, bilingual education, language and literacy education, applied linguistics, literacy studies, and language arts. 

Links:

• ​Routledge
• Bookshop.org

Click on the player below for an audio overview (via NotebookLM)

Reimagining Literacy in the Age of AI: Theory and Practice (2025)

The book goes beyond the conventional understanding of AI literacy as mere technological proficiency. Instead, it positions AI as a catalyst for expansive, inclusive, and multifaceted literacy practices in the digital age. Scholars from different parts of the world examine how AI is not just changing what we read and write but how we think, create, and express ourselves in a post-human context.

Links:

• ​Routledge
• Bookshop.org

English Language Teacher Education in Latin America: Autoethnographic Insights (Coming 2026)

Latin America's English language pedagogy still trails behind on the global stage despite countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia bolstering their English teacher education and enhancing the delivery of English as a foreign language. This landscape demands a deeper scholarly inquiry, particularly at the crossroads of innovative pedagogies and their real-world applications within the distinctive milieu of Latin America. Spanning the entire continent and a vast variety of teaching and learning contexts, this book's contributors tackle challenges including collaboration, professional identity and development, queer texts, democratizing access, social justice and materials design.

Links:

• ​Bloomsbury
• Bookshop.org

My top 10 publications per Google Scholar Citations, including an Audio Overview (from NotebookLM)

Mora, R. A. (2014a). Critical literacy as policy and advocacy: Lessons from Colombia. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 58(1), 16-18. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.329

Mora, R. A. (2014b). Counter-narrative. Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue, 36. https://centerforinterculturaldialogue.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/key-concept-counter-narrative.pdf

Mora, R. A., Chiquito, T., & Zapata, J. D. (2019). Bilingual education policies in Colombia: Seeking relevant and sustainable frameworks for meaningful minority inclusion. In B. G. G. Johannessen (Ed.), Bilingual education: Politics, policies, and practices in a globalized society (pp. 55-77). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05496-0_4

Weaver, S., Mora, R. A., & Morgan, K. (2016). Gender and humour: examining discourses of hegemony and resistance. Social Semiotics, 26(3), 227-233. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2015.113482

Mora, R. A. (2015). City literacies in second languages: New questions for policy and advocacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 59(1), 21-24. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.440

Mora, R. A. & Lopera Gómez, M.C. (2001). Games in the classroom: more than just having fun. HOW Journal, 8(1), 75-82. https://www.howjournalcolombia.org/index.php/how/article/view/220/269

Mora, R. A., Pulgarín, C., Ramírez, N., & Mejía-Vélez, M. C. (2018).  English literacies in Medellin: The city as literacy. In S. Nichols and S. Dobson (Eds.), Learning cities: Multimodal explorations and placed pedagogies (pp. 37-60). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8100-2_4

Mora, R. A. (2011). Tres retos para la investigación y formación de docentes en inglés: reflexividad sobre las creencias y prácticas en literacidad. Revista Q, 5(10). http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11912/668

Mora, R. A. (2016e). Translating literacy as global policy and advocacy. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 59(6), 647-651. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.515