Dr. Cristian Aquino-Sterling is an Associate Professor of Bi-/multilingual Education in the College of Education at Texas Tech University. He holds an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Arizona State University, a Master’s degree in Spanish Literatures and Cultural Studies from Columbia University, and dual Bachelor’s degrees in Western Philosophy and Spanish Literatures from Fordham University.

Before joining Texas Tech University, Dr. Aquino-Sterling served as an Associate Professor in the College of Education at San Diego State University, where he also held the positions of Inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity and International Affairs (2019–2022) and Inaugural Director of International Affairs (2022–2023).

Dr. Aquino-Sterling is the founder and co-director of the International and Comparative Bi-/Multilingual Education Research Group (ICBERG), alongside Dr. María Luisa Pérez-Cañado (Universidad de Jaén, Spain) as co-founder and co-director, and Dr. Mario Molina Naar (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia) as co-director. ICBERG is an emerging unifying international movement and community of mindful, open-minded, engaged, and collaborative scholar-practitioners dedicated to forging new transnational pathways in bi-/multilingual education for human flourishing from a variety of theoretical lenses and research traditions. ICBERG´s vision is to serve as a driving force for advancing the systematic internationalization of bi-/multilingual education research, scholarship, professional development, and advocacy beyond the insular nature of respective national borders. 

Dr. Aquino-Sterling's newly expanded line of research centers around three interrelated dimensions of bi-/multilingual education at national and international-comparative levels: (1) philosophical approaches to understanding the cultural and intellectual production of knowledge in the field; (2) the state of the art in international and comparative research and scholarship in bi-/multilingual education; (3) conceptualization, implementation, and research of curricular and pedagogical innovations in the preparation of bi-/multilingual education scholar-researchers; and (4) internationalization of doctoral bi-/multilingual education.

Dr. Aquino-Sterling is co-editor—with Dr. Mileidis Gort (University of Colorado Boulder) and Dr. Belinda Bustos Flores (University of Texas San Antonio)—of Curricular and Pedagogical Innovations in Bilingual Teacher Education: Bridging the Distance with School Contexts (Information Age Publishing, 2022).  He has published other significant scholarship in notable venues such as Bilingual Research Journal; Ensaios em Portugues como segunda língua ou língua estrangeira; International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism; International Multilingual Research Journal; Journal of Bilingual Education Research & Instruction; Mathematics Education Research Journal; Multicultural Perspectives; Revista comunicación; Revista internacional de educación para la justicia social; Teacher Education Quarterly; and Teachers College Record. Since 2019, he has served as editor of the "Curriculum & Instruction Development" section of the Journal of Global Education and Research (JGER). In spring 2024, Dr. Aquino-Sterling was elected Program Chair and Chair Elect of the Bilingual Education Research (BER) Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Dr. Aquino-Sterling has served as visiting scholar-researcher at various institutions, including the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (GC-CUNY), Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (UAM), and Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ).

Fluent in Spanish and English, with reading competencies in Latin and emerging proficiency in Brazilian Portuguese, Dr. Aquino-Sterling is dedicated to promoting bi-/multilingual education and is a Board Member for the Jirani Project, a nonprofit organization supporting vulnerable children in Kenya.