Shonna Trinch is Professor in the Department of Anthropology with teaching and research in sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and Spanish. A native of Pennsylvania and trained in Spanish Linguistics (PhD, University of Pittsburgh, 1999), she began her academic career at Florida State University. Her current research focuses on gentrificaiton in Brooklyn and the ways in which shop signs act as technologies of place-making in the pre-gentrication and gentrifying contexts. She has also studied and written about redvelopment in Brooklyn with Professor Edward Snajdr. This work can be found in journals such as Political and Legal Anthroplogy Review (PoLAR), Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding (IJSW) and Linguistic Landscapes.

Additionally, with expertise in understanding the reporting and representation of gender-related violence in social and legal institutions, Professor Trinch has writings that deal with Latina/Latinx women's narratives of domestic violence as told to sociolegal authorities in the U.S. Southwest where she spent 13 months collecting data in 10 different institutional settings. Her findings show how people collaborate and conflict in the creation of narratives of domestic abuse. Professor Trinch has also published about the way people talk about rape and sexualized violence in sociolegal and internet settings and her work can be found in journals such Language in Society, Journal of Sociolingusitics,  
Feminist Anthropology, Journal of Law, Culture and the Humanities among others.

Professor Trinch is also the co-founder (with Barbara Cassidy) of a student-led theater program called, Seeing Rape which brings undergraduates' plays to the stage with professional actors with the aim of eradicating rape on campus. Seeing Rape is in its ninth year and has brought more than 75 plays written by more than 100 students to audiences now totaling more than 20,000 people. For more on Seeing Rape, please visit the website at seeingrape.com