Feel free to reach out at michos AT bu DOT edu.

On your left is an illustration of Cosimo, the protagonist of Italo Calvino's best and most under-appreciated novel. In 1767, after a fight with his family where Cosimo refused to eat snails, he climbs a tree and decides to never again step on the ground. Doing theoretical linguistics feels like that for the most part, although most of 'our trees' are binary and do not change season after season.

“Cosimo sat in the ash tree every day, gazing at the meadow as if he could read in it something that had long been consuming him inside: the very idea of distance, of the gap that can't be bridged, of the wait that can last longer than life.”

― Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees

Here and below is my CV. (last update: May 20, 2025)