Richard A. Sandoval

Richard A. Sandoval, PhD, is an assistant professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His expertise includes linguistic anthropology, ancient Maya writing, art, calendars, traditions, Indigenous American signed-language practices, and language revitalization.

With nearly 20 years of experience in education, Dr. Sandoval began his career in higher education as a lecturer in Language, Culture, and Communication at MSU Denver in 2011. In 2016, he transitioned to a lecturer role in linguistic anthropology before being appointed as an assistant professor in 2019.

His current research focuses on the decipherment of inscribed hand signs in Classic Mayan texts. He is also actively engaged in language documentation, revitalization, and reclamation through the Ch’orti’ Project, a collaboration between MSU Denver’s Ethnography Lab and members of the Ch’orti’ (Mayan) communities in Guatemala and Honduras. Additionally, his work includes documenting and analyzing speech-sign bimodal features unique to Arapaho, an Algonquian language of North America’s Great Plains. This research is conducted in affiliation with the Center for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the West and the Northern Arapaho Tribe.

Before joining higher education, Dr. Sandoval worked as a language investigator and researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2010 to 2016 and previously taught science in Denver Public Schools.

Sandoval earned his doctorate and masters in the field of linguistics at the University of Colorado Boulder and his bachelor’s in linguistics at the University of Colorado Denver.