Iliana De Larkin received a PhD in Intercultural Communication from the Communication and Journalism department at the University New Mexico. She holds a B.A. in communication studies and African-American studies from Loyola Marymount University and an M.A. in multicultural communication from DePaul University in Chicago. Her academic interests include intercultural communication, the relationship between language and culture, as well as cultural identity. She often focuses her research on hybridity, mixed-race identity, and multicultural media representations in popular culture.