Jo-Anne S. Ferreira is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at The University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine Campus, and a member of SIL Global (Americas Area). She received her PhD in Linguistics from The UWI, St. Augustine, and also holds the DELF French language certificate (Grenoble III), SIL certificates in Linguistics (France and UK), a postgraduate diploma in Brazilian Indigenous Languages and Linguistics (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro), and the IPA Certificate in English Phonetics (via UCL).
Her research and publications focus on endangered heritage languages and their social history, specifically including the history of Portuguese language and culture in the Caribbean, and Caribbean/South American French Creole varieties. In 2024, she was awarded the prestigious Order of Rio Branco by the Government of Brazil for her outstanding contributions to advancing the Portuguese language and fostering cultural ties between Trinidad & Tobago and Brazil. She has also published on (socio)phonetics. She is a Past President of the Society for Caribbean Linguistics (SCL), and served on the SCL Executive Committee for 22 years.
