People

Faculty

Jon Barnes (Professor of Linguistics) is the director of the Phonology Lab and is also involved in the BU-MIT-Simmons Prosody Lab, which investigates measures of prosodic contrast such as TCoG (Tonal Center of Gravity).

Charles Chang (Associate Professor of Linguistics) is the director of the PAMLab. His research interests are in phonetics and phonology, language acquisition (especially L2 and L3/Ln learning), and the psycholinguistics of bilingualism and multilingualism.

Danny Erker (Associate Professor of Spanish and Linguistics) is the director of the Sociolinguistics Lab and Principal Investigator on the Spanish in Boston project. His research interests are in language variation and change, language and dialect contact, and Spanish in the United States.

Kate Lindsey (Assistant Professor of Linguistics) is a phonologist who specializes in the study of Ende and other languages of southern New Guinea. Her research interests are in underspecification and variation in phonological systems, vowel harmony, phonological reduplication, fieldwork and language documentation, and language typology.

Current Students and Interns

Serena Agarwal (Brown U. ’27) is a second-year undergraduate student at Brown University. She is interested in the intersection of Linguistics, Computer Science, and Neuroscience, and she is particularly interested in language acquisition, computational linguistics, and psycholinguistics.

Maryam Elbenni (Yale U. ’26) is a rising third-year undergraduate at Yale University majoring in Cognitive Science, with a focus in linguistics. Her research interests include multilingual speech, L2 language acquisition, and natural language processing.

Sara Hockett (BU GRS ’28) is a first-year PhD student in Linguistics. Her research interests include second language acquisition, phonological theory, and multilingualism interactions. She’s specifically looking to examine how the transfer or inhibition from one’s first language to the learning of a second can inform broader phonological theories related to sonority.

Felix Kpogo (BU GRS ’24) is a sixth-year PhD student in Linguistics. His interests are in first and second language acquisition (in particular, phonological and lexical acquisition), bilingualism, and African/Ghanaian languages such as Akan, Ga, and Ewe. He recently defended his dissertation, supported by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, which investigates a vowel quality shift in the Akan (Twi) vowel harmony system among city speakers in Ghana.

Jaiden (Mengan) Li (Andover High School ’25) is a high school junior. She is interested in second language acquisition, East Asian languages (including lesser-known dialects like Hmong and Fukienese), and natural language processing.

Jupitara Ray (BU GRS ’25) is a rising fifth-year PhD student in Linguistics, broadly interested in phonetics and phonology, sociolinguistics, bi/multi-lingualism in the diasporic community, etc. A research fellow in the lab in Spring 2024, she is currently working on her dissertation prospectus on phonetic accommodation and drift of Indian English speakers in India and the US.

Nick Tanner (UPenn ’26) is a third-year student studying Linguistics and Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s interested in the linguistics of American Sign Language and multilingualism.

Rebecca (Becca) Wheeler (BU GRS ’27) is a rising third-year PhD student in Linguistics. Her research interests include listener-directed speech styles and speech modification in native/non-native English speaker interactions. She is currently working on a qualifying paper exploring non-native English articulation rate as a trigger for foreigner-directed speech production.

Alumni and Former Interns

Celia Anderson (U. of Chicago ’22)
Allie Asaro (BU SAR ’20)
Sreyoshi Basu (U. of Rochester ’24 – MA Linguistics)
Aspen Bombardo (BU SAR ’21)
Adi Briskin (Washington U. of St. Louis ’25)
Jack Brown (BU CAS ’22)
Megan Brown-Bousfield (BU GRS ’18 – MA Applied Linguistics; BU GRS ’23 – PhD Linguistics)
Kun Cao (BU ENG ’18)
Marissa Carl (Mount Holyoke College ’23)
I Lei (Vicky) Chan (BU GRS ’17 – MA Applied Linguistics)
Daiana Chang (Columbia U. ’24 – MS Communication Sciences & Disorders)
Will Clapp (BU GRS ’19 – MA Linguistics)
Malav Dave (BU SAR ’20)
Danielle Dionne (BU GRS ’23 – PhD Linguistics)
Juno Dong (Colby College ’18)
Darby Douros (U. of Chicago ’19)
Erik Duchnowski (BU Academy ’24)
Christy Eichlin (BU CAS ’18)
Michael Fang (BU CAS ’22 / BU GRS ’22 – MA Linguistics)
Leslie Fink (Dartmouth College ’16)
Emily Fisher (Georgetown U. ’21)
Katherine (Kate) Fraser (BU CAS ’22)
Elise Gelblicht (BU CGS ’24)
Jenny Geng (UC Davis ’21)
Grace Guan (Mount Holyoke ’24)
Yuhao He (BU CAS ’21)
Kendra Hennegen (BU SAR ’19 – MS Speech-Language Pathology)
Jennifer Hollfelder (Needham High ’18)
Nolan Holley (Williams College ’22)
Xinwen Hu (BU GRS ’19 – MA Applied Linguistics)
Ziwei (Jo) Huang (Pitzer College ’19)
Will Hutter (Roxbury Latin School ’23)
Nurgül Işik (BU SED ’19 – EdM TESOL)
Madelyn (Maddie) Jin (BU CAS ’26)
Hye Youn Jo (BU SED ’18 – EdM TESOL)
Jackson Kellogg (BU GRS ’25 – PhD Linguistics)
Elisabeth Kotsalidis (BU CAS ’20)
Felix Kpogo (BU GRS ’24 – PhD Linguistics)
Peyton Krinsky (Tufts U. ’24)
Brenden Layte (BU GRS ’17 – MA Applied Linguistics)
Seokhwa Lee (Yonsei U. ’23)
Xiyuan (Jessica) Li (Hong Kong Polytechnic U. ’20)
William Longerbeam (BU CAS ’18)
Jade Ling Garstang (BU GRS ’25 – MA Linguistics)
Dominique Lopiccolo (BU GRS ’19 – MA Applied Linguistics)
Katie Martin (Yale U. ’18)
Stella Miao (BU CAS ’22)
Iliad Nazari (U. of Minnesota ’25)
Tyler Olds (Columbia U. ’22)
Eliana Mugar (BU CAS ’23)
Solveig Olson-Strom (Pomona College ’18)
Abby Pauley (BU CAS ’17, GRS ’17 – MA Linguistics)
Shane Quinn (Georgetown U. ’19, ’20 – MS Sociolinguistics)
Harper Pollio-Barbee (Brandeis U. ’21)
Cristina Reguera Gómez (UMBC ’22 – MA Intercultural Communication)
James Rice (BU CAS ’24)
Samantha (Sam) Rigor (BU CAS ’24)
Abigail Ripin (BU CAS ’20)
Kevin Samejon (Biola U. ’17; BU GRS ’24 – PhD Linguistics)
Maya Sanchez (Columbia U. ’21)
Jimmy Sbordone (BU CAS ’18, GRS ’18 – MA Linguistics)
Yueliang Shao (BU GRS ’19 – MA Linguistics)
Yash Subrahmanyam (BU CAS ’23)
Liza Sulkin (BU GRS ’26 – PhD Linguistics)
Sharmaine Sun (BU CAS ’19)
Xiaoyi (Claire) Tang (U. of Pennsylvania ’20 – MSEd TESOL)
Rachel Templeton (Stonehill ’17)
Kathryn Turner (BU CAS ’18, GRS ’18 – MA Linguistics)
Lena Venkatraman (Yale ’22)
Dallas Walter (BU CAS ’16)
Shan Wan (BU CAS ’19)
Jason Wang (Concord Carlisle High School ’24)
Yiin Wang (BU GRS ’23 – MA Linguistics)
Benjamin Wong (BU ENG ’20)
Yifan Wu (Xiamen U. ’23)
Xuehan (Annie) Xie (BU GRS ’24 – MA Linguistics)
Rui Xu (BU GRS ’20 – MA Linguistics)
Amira Yazghi (BU SAR ’20)
Wayne (Hosang) Yoon (BU CAS ’18)
Qian Yu (BU CAS ’21)
Steven Zhang (St. Mark’s School ’24)
Elizabeth Zhao (BU CAS ’21)
Yanwan Zhu (Smith College ’21)

Visiting Researchers

Sunyoung Ahn (Harvard University, AY 2018-19, AY 2019-20)
Sungmi Kwon (Pukyong National University, AY 2016-17)
Yao Yao (Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Spring 2019)

Collaborators

Sunyoung Ahn, University of Manitoba
Anita Bowles, Duolingo
Esther de Leeuw, Queen Mary, University of London
Robert DeKeyser, University of Maryland
Simon Fischer-Baum, Rice University
Erin Haynes, LifeMoves
Ewa Golonka, University of Maryland
Sam Green, University College London
Hae-Sung Jeon, University of Central Lancashire
Valerie Karuzis, University of Maryland
Shira Katseff (now Hahn), Aural Analytics
Sungmi Kwon, Pukyong National University
Sue Ann Lee, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
Sunyoung Lee-Ellis, Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State
Russell Lee-Goldman, Google
Andrew Nevins, University College London
Marta Piqueras-Brunet, Shopify
Russell Rhodes, Zillow
Kevin Tang, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
Medha Tare, Digital Promise
Karen Vatz, Norwich University
Daniel Wall, Carnegie Mellon University
Yao Yao, Hong Kong Polytechnic University