Natalia Rivera-Vera is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Language Sciences (ILS) of the Faculty of Humanities. Her research interests focus on how and from whom we learn a new language. She is currently working on the project "Getting to the CoRe: a communicative-receptive approach to language learning and mutual understanding in multilingual academic contexts". She is investigating 1) what cognitive processes underlie a receptive approach to language learning, and 2) how this affects successful communication in receptive multilingual settings.
Educational background
In 2009, Natalia received her Bachelor's degree in Hispanic Literature and Linguistics from the Pontificia Universidad Cat贸lica de Chile. At the same institution, she taught academic writing to BA students and worked as a research assistant at the of the School of Psychology. In 2012, Natalia was awarded a national scholarship to study at the rMA Brain and Cognitive Sciences of the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA).
In 2018, Natalia was awarded a scholarship to begin her Ph.D. studies at the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (ACLC) of the UvA. She received her Ph.D. in 2024, with a dissertation entitled . During her doctoral studies, Natalia investigated how adults process and integrate perceptual data and social-pragmatic information during (cross-situational) word learning.
In addition to her research, Natalia represented ACLC doctoral students (2020-2021) and helped organize local academic events for the ACLC community. She also worked as a lecturer in the BA Cognition, Language, and Communication program at the UvA from 2024 to 2025 and in the BA Latin American Studies program at Leiden 木瓜福利影视 from 2021 to 2023.
Currently, Natalia is the postdoc representative for the National Graduate School of Linguistics (Landelijke Onderzoekschool Taalwetenschap, LOT) for the period 2024-2026.