Helena González Ruiz

Teaching Fellow in Spanish and acting LLC Director of Students (2026/2027)

Biography

Background

Helena González Ruiz joined the University of Edinburgh in 2010 as a teacher of Spanish Language and Culture at the Centre for Open Learning, the university's language centre. In 2014 she joined the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC), where she works full time and where she is currently Course Organiser of Spanish Language 2, Cohort Lead for second year, and the Department of European Language and Cultures (DELC) Digital Coordinator. From 2021 to 2026 she has been the coordinator for SPLAS for Babble, DELC’s creative writing magazine.

Since 2025, Helena is the Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies (SPLAS) Student Staff Liaison Committee Convenor and is also the acting LLC Director for Students for 2026/2027 academic year. 

She holds a degree in History and a postgraduate certificate in Education. She holds an MSc in Applied Linguistics to teach Spanish as a foreign language, with a dissertation focused on the representation of the cultural element in language programmes, and an MA in Translation Studies in which she specialised in the use of machine translation as a teaching and learning tool in the second language classroom. Helena is also a qualified interpreter for the Chartered Institute of Linguists, is accredited as a DELE examiner for all levels by the Instituto Cervantes, and is also a SIELE exam trainer.

Since 2020, she has been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), a prestigious educational body in the UK that promotes excellence in Higher Education. In addition, in 2021 she joined the academic research group ELE-UK SIG for the Decolonisation of Spanish language teaching in Higher Education in the UK.

Her areas of academic interest are course design and constructive alignment, emotional intelligence in the language learning process, pedagogical translation, learning technologies in the second language classroom, and curriculum decolonisation.

Responsabilities in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies:

- Spanish Language 2 Course Organiser

- Cohort Lead for Second Year, Spanish Cluster

- SPLAS Student Staff Liaison Committee Convenor

- SIELE Exam Coordinator and Administrator 

Other responsabilities:

- DELC Digital Coordinator

- Acting LLC Director of Students (2026/2027)

Course Organisation:

  • Spanish Language 2: grammar lectures, and oral and written language seminars
  • SIELE exam training

Teaching undergraduate courses: 

  • Spanish Language 2 grammar lecture
  • Spanish Language 2 written and oral language seminars
  • Support seminars (oral language and grammar) for ex-1A students in second year
  • SIELE exam workshops

 

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