Linguist

I am a researcher working on Francoprovençal languages, associated with the Centre d'Études Francoprovençales in Saint-Nicolas (Aosta Valley, Italy) and the University of Toronto. In January 2026, I will start a 2-year postdoc at the Université Côte d'Azur in Nice, where I will work on questions in Romance with Dr. Lena Baunaz! 

I hold a PhD from the Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, where I was advised by Maria Polinsky, Aron Hirsch, and Gary Thoms (NYU). I am interested in how structure (syntax) interacts with the other components of the grammar: meaning and sound. I am currently working on questions in an understudied Francoprovençal variety spoken in Aosta Valley (Italy), Valdôtain Patois (see my dissertation here). Other projects focus on exceptive and exclusive constructions (Except John/setting aside John, everyone came.), reflexive verbs (They wash themselves.), and clitic pronouns. Finally, I am involved in #FPGlobal, a project led by Naomi Nagy (UofT) that aims to bring together speakers of Francoprovençal across Europe and North America, while creating a corpus of Francoprovençal varieties. 

Before the PhD, I received my BA at Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice, where I worked on Quirky Subjects in Icelandic with Alessandra Giorgi, and an MA from the University of Amsterdam, where I investigated the meaning-form interface in various contact situations, such as creolization and diglossia, advised by Kees Hengeveld and Roland Pfau.