I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Western Washington University for the 2025-26 academic year.
I received my Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2025 where my research focused on the language practices of the Cabo Verdean community in New England. My dissertation, which is titled "Kriolu in New England: Contact and Innovation in the Cabo Verdean Diaspora," explores several subfields of linguistics including Language Contact & Change, Bilingualism, Discourse Analysis, Prosody, and Experimental Phonetics amongst others.
Questions that spark my interest include:
How do bilingual and diasporic communities spark language change in home and host environments?
What phonetic features are changing as a result of contact?
What factors present in the linguistic environment cause certain of these features to be chosen over others?
How can considering speakers as both independent and community agents of change reveal why language evolves as it does?