The University of Illinois at Chicago is a major research university in the heart of one of the most

exciting and vibrant cities in the world. The Hispanic Linguistics Graduate Programs plays a key
part in university life and the wider community and is defined by its global and cosmopolitan character.
Hispanic Linguistics offers M.A. and Ph.D. programs led by nationally and internationally renowned
faculty.

Students may pursue coursework and research in a variety of areas:

Formal linguistics, with a focus on syntax, morphology, phonology/phonetics
Heritage languages, with a focus on identity, education, and society
Sociolinguistics, including contact between languages/dialects, language policy,
language attitudes, and language variation
Second language acquisition, both psycho- and neuro-linguistic approaches and
multilingualism

Our program is especially strong in the study of bilingualism: several of our faculty members focus
their research on topics such as bilingual and third language issues, heritage language maintenance,
bilingualism in the community, second language acquisition, and grammatical aspects of bilingualism.
Moreover, faculty members and students bring a strong interdisciplinary focus to scholarship and
teaching, and actively collaborate with other UIC programs such as TESOL, Neuroscience, Philosophy,
Psychology, Latino Studies, and Education. 


Our facilities include the Bilingualism Research Laboratory, the Cognition of Second Language
Acquisition Laboratory, the Multilingual Phonology Laboratory, and the Language in Context
Research Group. Our labs are equipped with state of the art technology and offer many opportunities
for our students to be involved in experimental research and fieldwork (http://lcsl.uic.edu/hispanic-
italian/research-groups). 


The bi-weekly Talks in Linguistics series is organized by our graduate students and provides a perfect
environment for intellectual growth and constructive debate. TiL invites speakers from around the
world to present their research and offers students the opportunity to present their own research and
receive feedback from peers (http://uictil.uic.edu/).

We also organize the UIC Bilingualism Forum, a biennial, international conference, run by our
graduate students (http://www.uic.edu/depts/ling/BilForum/).

Our department is also home to the internationally indexed journal Spanish in Context
(https://benjamins.com/#catalog/journals/sic/main).


The key to the success of our MA/PhD programs rests on the close mentoring of our students, and
teaching them every aspect of a linguist’s professional life: research, lab experience, team work,
research administration, conference presentation, and publications. This close collaboration between
faculty and students leads to publications of our students in major journals, presentations at
international conferences, many grants and awards and the placement of graduates in tenure-track
positions. The Hispanic Linguistics Programs at UIC offers graduate students the kind of opportunity
that is difficult to find in other institutions: the ability to develop as scholars and teachers in a tightly
knit intellectual community backed up by supportive faculty.


 http://lcsl.uic.edu/hispanic-italian/spanish/graduate-programs
Hispanic Linguistics Faculty Profiles
http://lcsl.uic.edu/hispanic-italian/faculty-instructors/hispanic-linguistics

Jennifer Cabrelli Amaro

Assistant Professor; Director of the Multilingual Phonology Laboratory
Adult acquisition of Spanish and Portuguese phonetics/phonology and syntax; heritage speaker
phonology/phonetics; phonological theory.

Richard Cameron
Associate Professor; Affiliated faculty; Co-director of the Language in Context Research Group
Variationist sociolinguistics; discourse analysis/pragmatics; TESOL; gender and language.

Kay E. González-Vilbazo
Associate Professor; Co-director UIC Bilingualism Research Lab
Semantics; syntax and morphology; bilingualism and code-switching from a grammatical
perspective.

Luis López
Professor; Co-director UIC Bilingualism Research Lab
Syntactic theory, including syntactic interfaces with other linguistic modules; Romance linguistics;
theory-driven empirical research in code-switching.

Kara Morgan-Short
Associate Professor; Director of the Cognition of Second Language Acquisition Laboratory
Second language acquisition, focusing on neurocognitive processes, explicit and implicit training
conditions, and individual differences in cognition.

Rafael Núñez-Cedeño
Professor Emeritus
Spanish phonology; morphology; dialectology; development of Spanish phonology.

Kim Potowski
Associate Professor; Co-director of the Language in Context Research Group; Director of the
Spanish Heritage Language Program; faculty affiliate in Latino Studies and in Curriculum &
Instruction
Heritage language development; Spanish in the U.S.; language & identity; dual immersion education.

Inma Taboada
Clinical Assistant Professor; Advisor for Masters in the Teaching of Spanish
Syntax; teaching of Spanish