I am a Lecturer in Linguistics in the School of Languages and Cultures, University of Queensland. My main research areas are phonetics, phonology, and prosody, primarily in languages of Australia and the Pacific. I am interested in language documentation and description, prosody and its interfaces, prosodic variation, and phonetic typology.
I received my PhD in Linguistics from the University of Melbourne associated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, and Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Linguistics from the Australian National University. Before I joined UQ in 2024, I held a postdoctoral Humboldt Fellowship based at the Institute for Phonetics and Speech Processing, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, and I was previously a postdoctoral researcher on an ERC Advanced Grant based at Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
I enjoy making linguistics accessible and interesting for audiences outside of universities. I am a co-developer of the Linguistics Roadshow - an interactive showcase about the science of language for high school students.
I am an ethnomusicologist and anthropological linguist with a broad research interest in many aspects of music, language, culture and performance, with a particular interest in collaborative research with communities to support the continuity of vulnerable forms of performance.
I have carried out ethnographic research documentation on language and music with Portuguese Burghers in Sri Lanka, Irish speaking communities in the Aran Islands and Australia and Tamil speaking communities involved with Carnatic music in Australia. I have also worked on collaborative language and music projects with Aboriginal communities including Ngarigu as well as Mawng, Yolngu and Walrpiri communities as co-producer of the podcast Music!Dance!Culture!
My Postdoctoral Research Fellowship focuses on working with Aboriginal communities on supporting the continuity of their song language ecologies. This includes the Mudburra Songs project.
