María Cioè-Peña earned her PhD in Urban Education from The Graduate Center - City University of New York, where she was also an Advance Research Collaborative fellow and a Presidential MAGNET Fellow. She is a bilingual/biliterate education researcher and educator who examines the intersections of disability, language, school-parent partnerships and education policy. Taking a sociolinguistic approach and stance, she pushes and reimagines the boundaries of inclusive spaces for minoritized children. Stemming from her experiences as a former bilingual special education teacher, María’s research focuses on bilingual children with dis/abilities, their families and their ability to access multilingual and inclusive learning spaces within public schools. Her interests are deeply rooted in political economy, raciolinguistic perspectives and critical dis/ability awareness within schools and families.

​María's dissertation has won awards from major organizations in the field of bilingual education; first-place winner for Outstanding Dissertation by the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) in 2019 and third place winner for Outstanding Dissertation by AERA's Bilingual Education Research SIG in 2020. In 2022, her article “Wanting to Leave; Needing to Stay: Issues for undocumented mothers of children with disabilities” received the Inaugural Outstanding Publication Award from the Council For Exceptional Children's Division for Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Exceptional Learners. María was also awarded the Early Career Award by AERA's Bilingual Education Research SIG in 2022. María is currently an Assistant Professor in the division of Educational Linguistics at Penn GSE.​ Her book, (M)othering Labeled Children: Bilingualism and Disability in the Lives of Latinx Mothers, was released May 2021 by Multilingual Matters and was awarded the First Book Award by the American Association of Applied Linguistics in 2023.

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