Mark Amengual

Mark Amengual is Professor and Chair of the Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, within the Division of Humanities. He directs the UCSC Bilingualism Research Lab and specializes in experimental approaches to bilingual speech systems.

His research focuses on phonetic performance in multilingual populations, examining speech production, perception, and processing across diverse language combinations including Spanish-Catalan, Spanish-Galician, Spanish-English-Japanese trilinguals, and heritage speakers of Spanish/Tagalog. Key interests span experimental phonetics, bilingual cognition, heritage language acquisition, and cross-linguistic influence in simultaneous/sequential multilinguals.

Amengual has edited major reference works including The Cambridge Handbook of Bilingual Phonetics and Phonology (2024) and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Romance Linguistics (2025), with publications appearing in top journals like Journal of Phonetics and Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

His scientific recognition includes:

• Hellman Fellows Fund
• William C. Powers Jr. Fellowship

Research is supported by NSF, UC MEXUS, Alianza MX, and UC Santa Cruz Faculty Research Grants. Amengual actively mentors through his Bilingualism Research Lab and leads field-building initiatives, with upcoming workshops in Mexico and conference presentations through 2026 on trilingual elasticity and heritage language variation.