I am currently a SSHRC post-doctoral research fellow at Carleton University under the supervision of Beth MacLeod. I previously held this post at Oklahoma State University under the supervision of Valerie Freeman. Before this, I worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Manitoba under the supervision of Nicole Rosen. I completed my PhD (2022) and MA (2018) in Linguistics at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Jessamyn Schertz (PhD) and Yoonjung Kang (MA). I completed my B.A. (Hons) in Linguistics at Carleton University in 2017.
Research
I am a sociophonetician working on the production and perception of phonetic variation in North American English. I am particularly interested in how social and individual factors impact the perception of phonetic variation and how this relates to phonological category formation, as well as using online methodologies for widespread data collection and developing methods for quantifying social, individual and linguistic factors.
My dissertation focuses on variation in the perception of pre-velar /æ/-raising and how that relates to metalinguistic awareness, phonological context and individual production. My post-doctoral work with Nicole Rosen investigates sociophonetic variation (in production) in Manitoba, Canada as part of the Languages in the Prairies Project. My post-doctoral work with Valerie Freeman and Beth MacLeod involves collecting speech production data targetting English sociophonetic features from across North America.
My other research interests include phonetic imitation, gender-based sound symbolic patterns in given names, which I have investigated in English, French and Korean with Yoonjung Kang, the effects of individual cognitive differences on speech perception, linguistics pedagogy, particularly as relates to teaching and grading writing, and lexical realizational functional grammar (LRFG).
Teaching
As course instructor, I have taught courses in introductory linguistics and psycholinguistics at the University of Toronto, the University of Manitoba and Carleton University. As a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto, I taught and graded courses in introductory linguistics, phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, and statistics. As the Lead Writing TA (LWTA) for Linguistics at the University of Toronto, I helped integrate writing into designated courses through providing TAs with training on teaching and grading writing, assisting professors with developing writing activities and assignments and participating in specialized training on writing pedagogy. I’ve also been able to successfully implement the ideas I learned in this position to my other teaching positions, with positive feedback from students (i.e. students wanted and appreciated explicit writing instruction).
Web Design
Prior to studying linguistics, I worked as a web designer. My work in this area mostly involved designing and maintaining WordPress and static HTML websites. I currently use my skills in this area to implement online linguistics experiments using jsPsych.