Grant Goodall has been elected to a nine-year term in the Academy of Esperanto. Founded in 1905 by Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, the Academy is tasked with monitoring and guiding the evolution of the language. This evolution is of interest because over the course of its existence, Esperanto has gone from a desktop project to a living language with a large base of fluent speakers, including native speakers. The 45 members of the Academy are elected by their peers in recognition of their contributions to Esperanto letters and scholarship.
Grant Goodall first learned Esperanto in his early teens. While still in high school, he studied advanced Esperanto at San Francisco State University and later taught it both there and at UC San Diego. He has been on the Board of Directors of the Esperantic Studies Foundation, which sponsors research on Esperanto and related topics, since 2001, and he teaches a course at UC San Diego on the linguistics of invented languages. Some of his recent research analyzes the structure of constructed languages from the late 19th century, such as Esperanto, and how this was affected by what was (not) known about language universals at the time.