Linney Gatto
Born in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, Brazil, Linney Gatto comes from a family marked by generations of immigrants — Portuguese on one side, internal migrants from different regions of Brazil on the other.
Her journey with plurilingualism began in childhood, with a spontaneous curiosity about English that led her to begin formal ESL study at the age of ten, a commitment that eventually opened significant professional opportunities. Spanish was self-taught in adulthood, driven by the demands of regional work contexts. French came more recently, pursued not as a professional asset but as a personal calling, and ultimately brought her to Montreal in 2024.
Professionally, Linney spent twelve years in corporate communications, working at American multinational companies across Latin America, where she developed expertise in project management, content development, cross-cultural collaboration, and translation and adaptation across Portuguese, English, and Spanish. Her intellectual life, however, has always extended beyond a single field: she holds a degree in communications and training in psychoanalysis, and, after relocating to Quebec, completed a Film & TV Production diploma at Trebas Institute. This plurality of paths reflects a lifelong identity as a student, drawn to learning across disciplines as much as across languages.
In Quebec, two experiences began to converge into what would become her path toward applied linguistics. She started teaching Portuguese and English to fellow immigrants, and at the same time co-directed a short documentary about Brazilian immigrants affected by changes to immigration programs — a project that confronted her with how language requirements meant to facilitate integration can also function as gatekeeping mechanisms. Together, these experiences led her to pursue an MA in Second Language Education at ºÚÁÏÍø±¬³Ô¹Ï under the supervision of Professor Angelica Galante, with research interests at the intersection of plurilingualism, language policy, identity, and immigration.
