In memoriam: Kimberly L. Geeslin

Kimberly L. Geeslin (1971-2023) was Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Vice Provost of Faculty and Academic Affairs. Born in Stanford, California, Professor Geeslin, called Kim by family and friends, grew up in Durham, New Hampshire, and completed her Bachelor’s degree at the University of New Hampshire, followed by Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Arizona (1999). Kim joined the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University in the Fall of 1999, where she served as the Director of the Hispanic Linguistics program, Associate Chair, and Interim Chair. She was also an adjunct faculty member in the Departments of Second Language Studies and Cognitive Science. Before her untimely death at the age of 51, Kim briefly served as Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs, after serving as Associate Vice Provost for five years.

Kim was a world-renowned scholar, with 9 books and 85 article-length publications, specializing in research at the intersection of second language acquisition and sociolinguistics. Kim’s seminal work on the Spanish copula combined and extended work and methods from the fields of sociolinguistics and second language acquisition. Kim’s research anchored a growing subfield of investigation that explored how in second language users’ linguistic systems vary systematically and in socially meaningful ways, as well as how learners’ linguistic variation develops over the course of their learning trajectories and in relation to their experiences and the contexts and speakers with whom they are in contact.

In addition, her teaching and mentorship was recognized by many awards including the Trustee's Teaching Award (3 times), the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Graduate Student Action Committee Outstanding Mentor Award (2 times), the David and Cheryl Morley Career Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Carol Hostetter Lifetime Teaching Career Award. She directed more than 20 dissertations and served on 40 additional dissertation committees.

Her impressive collection appears in memoriam courtesy of IU Libraries.