IWLA 2025 Conference Keynote Speaker

The Iowa World Language Association is extremely pleased

to welcome Dr. LJ Randolph, Jr. as our 2025 Conference Keynote Speaker! 

Dr. L. J. Randolph Jr. is an assistant professor of World Language Education and affiliate faculty in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

His keynote for our Saturday conference is titled, "Humans Who Language: Restoring Humanity to Language Education in Dehumanizing Times". 

He will also be presenting a session, entitled, "The Bad Bunny Curriculum: Engaging Students with Critical Perspectives through Music".

Dr. Randolph is a powerful voice for language education K-20 and we are thrilled to bring him to Iowa to share his insights with us.

Here is more information about his career and contributions so far:

Before working in higher education, he spent a decade as a Spanish and ESL teacher at the high school level. His research and teaching focus on various critical issues in language education, including teaching Spanish as a heritage/home/community language, incorporating justice-centered/anti-racist/anti-colonial pedagogies, and centering Blackness and Indigenousness.

He is a co-editor of the volume How We Take Action: Social Justice in PreK-16 Classrooms (Information Age Publishing, 2023). An advocate for abolitionist, liberationist, and transformative language education, he has held leadership roles in many professional language associations at the state and national level, including 2024 president of ACTFL (originally founded as the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages).