Alain Bengochea is an associate professor in the Department of Early, Multilingual, and Special Education at UNLV, where he has been a faculty member since 2016. A native speaker of English and Spanish and a former bilingual classroom teacher in New York City, his work is driven by a commitment to honoring the languages, knowledge, and experiences that multilingual learners and their families bring to schools and early childhood settings and to building the systems and practices that enhance those strengths.

His research examines how multilingual learners and their teachers draw on their full linguistic and communicative resources across different settings and age groups, from young emergent bilinguals' use of multiple languages during sociodramatic play and show-and-tell to teachers' beliefs and practices in dual language preschools and English-medium K-12 classrooms. He has also investigated vocabulary and language development support for emergent bilinguals and, more recently, has turned to questions of early care and education policy, exploring how child care subsidies, provider practices, and family decision-making shape access and enrollment opportunities for multilingual families. Bengochea has published in leading journals in early childhood, literacy, and bilingualism and has secured over $5 million in funded research from federal, state, and institutional sources.

At UNLV, Bengochea teaches graduate courses in advocacy, translanguaging pedagogies, and language development and continuously mentors graduate students at the master's and doctoral levels. Bengochea is also the president of the Nevada State Association for Bilingual Education (NVSABE), a statewide organization dedicated to connecting educators, families, and communities around multilingual education advocacy and professional learning. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Literacy Research, Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, and Journal of Early Adolescence, and his work has been featured in KTNV News and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.