Sonya Rao

Sonya Rao is a linguistic and legal anthropologist. She completed her PhD in Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles in June 2021. She examines courtrooms as workplaces, courtroom professionals as communication workers, and professional outlooks on language as working conditions. From 2014-17, she observed hearings in Immigration Courts and at the National Labor Relations Board for a dissertation, Privatizing Language Work: Interpreters and Access in Los Angeles Immigration Court, supported by the National Science Foundation program in Law and Social Sciences. The analysis focused on the impacts of private management of language services on courtroom practice and resulting labor organizing of court interpreters. At the American Bar Foundation, she will investigate the current state of legal training around cross-linguistic communication, and clinical legal education for working with interpreters informed by empirical knowledge about language and communication. Her work has been published in the Journal of Anthropological Research and Anthropology News.