Whitney Chappell, PhD

Ricardo Romo PhD Endowed Professorship

Professor, Modern Languages and Literatures

Whitney Chappell joined the UT San Antonio faculty in 2013. Her research interests include linguistic variation across regions, groups and individuals, and she seeks to understand how different social groups use language to negotiate their identities and stances. More specifically, she studies the variable pronunciations and linguistic practices of diverse Spanish-speaking communities, including monolingual groups, multilingual groups, heritage Spanish speakers and learners of Spanish as a second language.

Her work has been published in refereed academic journals such as Language and Speech, Spanish Heritage Language Journal, Journal of Sociolinguistics and Journal of Linguistic Geography.

Chappell was a Fulbright U.S. Scholar at the Universidad de Murcia in 2019. She has received several awards at UT San Antonio, including the 2025 Best Research Paper Award from the university’s Academy of Distinguished Researchers and the 2021 Researcher of the Year Award from the College of Liberal and Fine Arts. She has also been nominated for the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award and the Piper Professor Award, two of the top teaching awards in Texas.

Chappell earned her PhD in Spanish Linguistics from The Ohio State University.