Iria Bello Viruega works as a contract professor with a PhD at the University of the Balearic Islands, where she teaches English for Specific Purposes courses and seminars on Second Language Acquisition at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She has a B.A, a M.A. and a PhD in English Philology, awarded by the University of A Coruña (Spain). She has taught language and Linguistics courses at the College of the Holy Cross (USA), the University of A Coruña (Spain), Heidelberg University (Germany), and, since 2018, she has worked in the Department of Spanish, Modern, and Classical Philology at the University of the Balearic Islands. She currently has two five-year periods (quinquenio) and one six-year period (sexenio) of recognized teaching and research.

Her research interests lie in the fields of Psycholinguistics and Corpus Linguistics, Experimental Pragmatics, and Second Language Acquisition. She has co-edited a volume on Foreign Language Acquisition (Peter Lang, 2019), published articles in peer-reviewed journals (11) and book chapters (16). She has participated in (30) and organized (10) specialized international conferences in Chile, France, Germany, Spain and the United States. In addition, she has been a member of international research projects (9) obtained through competitive calls (Xunta de Galicia, Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Science and Innovation, National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research of Chile, Heidelberg University). She has also carried out research stays at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom, 2011, 2023), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso (Chile, 2016, 2017, 2018), University of Costa Rica (Costa Rica, 2017) and University of Murcia (Spain, 2022).

Research projects:

Etiquetado electrónico de textos científico-técnicos en lengua inglesa entre los siglos XVIII Y XX (5): Coruña Corpus (CC) (ref.: PID2022-136500NB-I00)

PI: Isabel Moskowich-Spiegel Fandiño

Universidade da Coruña

Funding: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades

Period: 01/06/2023 - 31/05/2025

Attrition and Ultimate Attainment (LAUA) (ref.: PID2021-122127NB-I00)

PI: Pedro Guijarro Fuentes

Universitat de les Illes Balears

Funding: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades

Period: 01/09/2022 - 31/09/2026  

Publications (Last 5 years):

• Nadal, Laura & Bello Viruega, Iria (in press). Counter-argumentation and the rigidity of procedural meaning: an experimental study on the Italian connective tuttavia, Studia Linguistica.

• Bello Viruega, Iria, Crespí, María del Mar, & Pomar, Miquel (in press). Teaching mediation competence in higher education: a case study in the field of Hotel Management. In Margarita Esther Sánchez Cuervo, Elena Quintana Toledo, Francisco José Álvarez Gil (eds), The Intercultural Dimension in Language Acquisition and Learning. Peter Lang.

• Gil Poisa, María, Bello Viruega, Iria, & Juan Moreno, Dolores (in press). La adquisición de la competencia transcultural en estudiantes de ciencias de la salud: una propuesta de proyecto de aprendizaje internacional colaborativo en línea aplicada al aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras. Experiencias educativas con el modelo COIL.

• Nadal, Laura & Bello Viruega, Iria (2024). Bridging the gap: Mediation processes in German L2 Spanish L1 higher education classroom. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice 18(1), 104-134. https://doi.org/10.1558/jalpp.23607

• Guijarro Fuentes, Pedro, Bello Viruega, Iria, & Sánchez Masià, Melania (2024). Aspects of morphosyntax of Majorcan Catalan-Spanish bilingual variety: the omission of direct objects. Torrens,  V. (ed.). Language Acquisition in Romance Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 34-57. https://doi.org/10.1075/bpa.18 

• Bello Viruega, Iria & Nadal, Laura (2023). Processing coherence: an experimental study on the Italian connective pertanto. Italian Journal of Linguistics 35(2), 119-144.  https://doi.org/10.26346/1120-2726-213   

• Mañas Navarrete, Iban, Guijarro Fuentes, Pedro,  & Bello Viruega, Iria  (2023). The acquisition of copula alternation ser/estar and adjective in L1 Russian, Spanish Heritage Speakers. Languages, 8(269). https://doi.org/10.3390/languages8040269.  

• Nadal Sanchis, Laura & Bello Viruega, Iria (2023). Insights from an empirical study on communicative functions and L1 use during conceptual mediation in L2 peer interaction. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching. AOP 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2022-0170.

• Guijarro Fuentes, Bello Viruega, Iria, García Alcaraz, Estela & Viveros, Sergio. (2023). Ultimate attainment in long-immersed Italian immigrants: syntactic and semantic knowledge of direct object clitics and partitive ne. In Francesco Romano (ed.), Studies in Italian as a Heritage Language. De Gruyter. 35–64. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110759587-003 

• Crespí Ferriol, María del Mar, Bello Viruega, Iria, & Pomar Amer, Miquel (2022). Un único caso práctico para aplicar derecho laboral y mediación lingüística. Experiencia de un proyecto interdisciplinar. In Benjamí, Anglés, Juanpere & Irene Rovira Ferrer (coord.), La docencia del derecho y las TIC después de la pandemia. Barcelona: Huygens. 193-199.

• Nadal Sanchis, Laura & Bello Viruega, Iria (2022). Are textual mediation activities effective in the training of translators? Insights from an empirical study. International Journal of Language Studies 16(3), 127-148. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c8uUF45zfpvUSmMPx2TU8REP_mxgXXjJ/view  

• Bello Viruega, Iria (2021). Procesos de focalización en el registro científico en inglés moderno tardío. Revista de lenguas para fines específicos 27(2), 109-124. https://doi.org/10.20420/rlfe.2021.439  

• Nadal, Laura, Bello Viruega, Iria and Pardo, Neyla (2021). Perception and decision making: A multi-technique analysis of campaign posters in the 2019 Bogotá mayoral election. International Journal of Communication 15, 2462–2483. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/16107/3451  

• Bello Viruega, Iria & Narváez García, Elisa (2021). A study of coherence relations in the English scientific register: Conjunctions in the Corpus of English Life Sciences Texts. In Moskowich, Isabel; Lareo, Inés and Camiña Rioboó, Gonzalo (eds.), "All families and genera": Exploring the Corpus of English Life Sciences Texts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 266–287. https://doi.org/10.1075/z.237.14bel

• Bello Viruega, Iria, Bernales, Carolina & Narváez García, Elisa (2020). Focalización y escalaridad: análisis experimental del procesamiento en inglés L2. In Parodi, Giovanni and Julio, Cristóbal Julio (eds.) Comprensión y discurso: Del movimiento ocular al procesamiento cognitivo: metodologías experimentales. Valparaíso: Ediciones Univ. de Valparaíso, 137-165.

•  Bello, Iria (2019). On cognitive complexity in scientific discourse: A corpus-based study on additive coherence relations. In Moskowich, Isabel, Begoña Crespo, Luis Puente-Castelo and Leida Maria Monaco (eds.) Writing history in Late Modern English: Explorations of the Coruña Corpus, 260–276. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.17979/spudc.9788497497091

• Bello Viruega, Iria, Bernales, Carolina, Calvi, Maria Vittoria & Landone, Elena (eds.) (2019). Cognitive Insights on Discourse Markers in Second Language Acquisition. Bern: Peter Lang.

• Bello Viruega, Iria & Bernales, Carolina (2019). Processing focus operators and pragmatic scales: an eye-tracking study on information processing in English. In Bello Viruega, Iria, Bernales, Carolina, Calvi, Maria Vittoria and Landone, Elena (eds.) Cognitive Insights on Discourse Markers in Second Language Acquisition. Bern: Peter Lang, 93-118.

• Bello Viruega, Iria, Bernales, Carolina, Calvi, Maria Vittoria & Landone, Elena (2019). Introduction. In Bello Viruega, Iria, Bernales, Carolina, Calvi, Maria Vittoria and Landone, Elena (eds) Cognitive Insights on Discourse Markers in Second Language Acquisition. Bern: Peter Lang, 1-12.

• Ivanova, Olga & Bello Viruega, Iria (2019). Pragmatic processing in Second Language: what can focus operators tell us about cognitive performance in L2? In Bello Viruega, Iria, Bernales, Carolina, Calvi, Maria Vittoria and Landone, Elena (eds) Cognitive Insights on Discourse Markers in Second Language Acquisition. Bern: Peter Lang, 67-92.

Conference Presentations (Last 5 years): 

• Mañas Navarrete, Iban, Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro, Bello Viruega, Iria. La adquisición de la alternancia cópula ser/estar y adjetivo en hablantes de ruso L1 y español como lengua de herencia. El español como Lengua de Herencia y el multilingüismo en Europa: retos y nuevos horizontes, KU Leuven (Belgium), May, 17-18, 2024, 

• Bello Viruega, Iria. Beſides its Uſe: conjunctions and coherence relations in late Modern English scientific register, 42st International Conference of the Spanish Society for Applied Linguistics (AESLA41), Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain), April 26-28, 2024 .

• Guijarro-Fuentes, Pedro, S. Masià, Melania, Bello Viruega, Iria. Mañas Navarrete, Iban, Bilingualism and monolingualism: a window to test direct object expressions. Null Objects from a Crosslinguistic and Developmental Perspective (NOCroDeP), Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main (Germany), December 7-8, 2023.

• Gil Poisa, María, Bello Viruega, Iria & Juan Moreno, Dolores. Aprendizaje internacional colaborativo en línea en el aula de ELE para fines específicos en la educación superior: una propuesta sobre competencias transculturales en el ámbito de las Ciencias de la Salud I Congreso Internacional de Innovación en la Enseñanza de Lengua Española (CIIELE), November 2023, Universidad de Murcia (Spain).

• Nadal Sanchis, Laura & Bello Viruega, Iria, Funciones comunicativas y uso de L1 durante la mediación conceptual: un estudio comparativo entre CLIL y no CLIL. 40th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Applied Linguistics (AESLA40), Universidad de Extremadura (Spain), April 26-28, 2023.

• Gil Poisa, María, Bello Viruega, Iria & Juan Moreno, Dolores. Collaborative Online International Learning: a project in the making. LLC's Speaker Series 2022-2023, Clark University (USA), April 05, 2023.

• Gil Poisa, María, Bello Viruega, Iria & Juan Moreno, Dolores. Desafíos transculturales para estudiantes de ciencias de la salud: una propuesta de proyecto de aprendizaje internacional colaborativo en línea. II Congreso Internacional de Calidad e Innovación Docente en Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de Murcia (Spain), March 22-24, 2023

• Guijarro Fuentes, Pedro, Bello Viruega, Iria & Sánchez Masià, Melania. Measuring the bidialectal competence: null object constructions, VI Spanish Dialects Meeting, Universidad de Alcalá (Spain), October 24-25, 2022.

• Bello Viruega, Iria & Sánchez Barreiro, Estefanía. On the importance of the common ground in scientific discourse: extenders and focus operators in late Modern English, 43rd International Conference of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME43), Anglia Ruskin University (UK), July 27-30, 2022.

• Bello Viruega, Iria. Are they ready for action? Results of a university teaching innovation project on intercultural competence, 39th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Applied Linguistics (AESLA39), Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), April 27-29, 2022.

• Crespì, Maria del Mar, Bello Viruega, Iria & Pomar, Miquel. Un mismo caso práctico para aplicar derecho laboral y mediación lingüística. Experiencia de un proyecto interdisciplinar, XIII Jornada sobre Docencia del Derecho, Universidad Oberta de Catalunya (Spain), July 1, 2022.

• Bello Viruega, Iria. From cognition to use: A corpus study on focalization in late Modern English scientific register, 11th Historical Sociolinguistics Network Conference 2022 (HISON 2022), Universidad de Murcia (Spain), June 1-3, 2022.

• Pomar, Miquel, Bello Viruega, Iria & Crespì, Maria del Mar. Easier said than done. Results of a university teaching innovation project on intercultural competence in hotel management. 5th International Symposium on Language for International Communication (LINCS 2022). University of Latvia (Latvia), April 28-29, 2022.

• Nadal, Laura & Bello Viruega, Iria. 2021. “CLIL or not CLIL? The competence of mediation in bilingualism: an experimental analysis”. Bilingualism and Multilingualism and Language Learning/Teaching Conference (BiMuLT), University of Cyprus, Nicosia (Cyprus), November 20-21, 2021.

• Nadal, Laura & Bello Viruega, Iria. 2021. Counter-argumentation, plausibility, and processing: an experimental study on the Italian connective tuttavia. Argumentation et langage (Argage 2021), Université de Neuchâtel (Switzerland), November 10-12, 2021.

• Bouso, Tamara, Arbulú Villanueva, Ítalo & Bello Viruega, Iria. 2021. “Satisfacción y rendimiento académico en estudiantes universitarios a través del enfoque por tareas (TBLT): Resultados preliminares de un proyecto de innovación docente interdisciplinar", III Congreso Internacional "Escritura y lectura en la educación superior: prácticas sociales de formación profesional y desarrollo humano" (III ALES 2021), Universidade Federal da Paraíba (Brasil), 11-13 November 2021

• Bello Viruega, Iria. 2021. “Procesamiento y causalidad: un estudio experimental sobre la plausibilidad en italiano”. Congreso Internacional de Lingüística de Corpus. Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla (España), June 23 – 25, 2021.