Dr. Austin’s research draws on critical race and sociocultural theories. From a broader social perspective, as well as from a discursive microanalytic level, she examines language and literacy policies and planning for multilingual (bilingual+) learners and teachers. Her transnational scholarship addresses ethnolinguistic and cross cultural issues in planning language and literacy curriculum, teacher inquiry, technology-assisted learning, assessment and evaluation for learning second and world languages (African American English, ESL/EFL, Spanish, Japanese, etc).

She conducts sociohistorical research, ethnographies of communication, and critical discourse analysis for inquiry to responsibly address the instructional needs of diverse, historically underserved communities. Her most recent research examines multimodal learning within multiliterate and multilingual contexts.

Her scholarship appears in Multicultural Education & Technology Journal, Modern Language Journal, Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies Journal, Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Language Report, Journal of Educational Foundations, Foreign Language Annals, Teachers College Record, and others.Currently she serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Dialogic Pedagogy. She has served on the editorial advisory boards of several journals: Multicultural Education & Technology Journal, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, among others.