Lecturers

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, I am a sociolinguistics researcher (PhD, A.B.D., University of Michigan) and Spanish language instructor (University of Tennessee). To learn more about me, watch my TEDx talk on language and humor, read this feature U-M article about my professional journey, or browse my affiliations. Outside of my work as an academic, I am a story-telling standup comedian and contemporary dance choreographer.

I am currently a linguistics Ph.D. candidate (A.B.D.) at the University of Michigan (M.A.) with an undergraduate degree from the Pennsylvania State University in Applied Spanish (B.S.) and K-12 World Language Education (B.S.)

I am an experimental sociolinguist whose research program focuses on Spanish-English bilingualism in the U.S. and Spanish-Quichua bilingualism in South America. I investigate the social and cognitive factors that impact bilingual language processing and production through fieldwork interviews, corpus analyses, online surveys, artificial language learning experiments and neurolinguistics studies. Learn more about my research or view my CV.

• Passionate about teaching, I have taught and developed curricula for 600+ learners in multiple countries (South Korea, Ecuador, U.S.) on courses in linguistics, cognitive science, English and Spanish. Below is a summary of my university teaching record (more information regarding my course content and student evaluations here):
• Part-time lecturer, University of Tennessee (AY 2020-21), Intermediate Spanish
• Instructor of record, University of Michigan (2017, 2019), Language in a Multicultural World (LING 115), Writing and Academic Inquiry (ENG 125)
• Graduate student instructor, University of Michigan (2016-2019)