Sonya Rao
  • Postdoctoral Fellow

Sonya Rao

  • Postdoctoral Fellow
ABF/ National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Law and Inequality
ABF Researcher

Sonya Rao is a linguistic and legal anthropologist who examines working conditions in multilingual legal spaces. At the ABF, she is investigating the current state of training to communicate across languages in clinical legal education. From 2014 to 2018, Sonya observed hearings in U.S. Immigration Courts and at the National Labor Relations Board. For her current book project, Privatizing Language Work: Interpreters and Access in Los Angeles Immigration Court, Sonya analyzed that data to explore how private management of language services impacts courtroom practice and resulting labor organizing of court interpreters. Her work has been published in the Journal of Anthropological Research and Anthropology News, and her review article, “The Invisible Labor and Ethics of Interpreting,” coauthored with Laura Kunreuther, is on early view in the current volume of Annual Review of Anthropology. Sonya completed her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles in June 2021. Her work has been supported by funding from the AccessLex Institute and National Science Foundation Grant No. SES-1946670.