Welcome!

I am sociolinguist and member of the Sociolinguistic Lab at the Universität Duisburg-Essen (Germany), with training in language documentation and conservation from the Linguistics program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (2017). Most recently I have been a research assistant at the Australian National University in the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, working on such projects as the Ku Waru Child Language Socialization Study (Alan Rumsey, PI), the Kiriwina Dictionary (Andrew Pawley, PI), and as assistant to the CoEDL-ANU Data Manager (Julia Miller).

My main research interests are language attitudes and ideologies, language policy and planning, and the general sociolinguistic issues of so-called ‘development’ in my geographic of expertise, Timor-Leste. As such, and supported by my extensive educational background, my research is necessarily cross-disciplinary. I was among the first pair of Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellows to Timor-Leste in 2014-15, where I spent a year working in the Ministry of Education on multilingual early-grades curriculum. My PhD used survey and interview data collected during this time to describe attitudes toward Tetun Dili, one of Timor-Leste’s official languages. Sadly, the fellowship suffered budget cuts as a result of a vindictive administration and ended just two years after it began in Timor-Leste.

In Australia I was able to put my background in linguistics, multilingualism, and education to good use as a linguistic Jill-of-all-trades: as a tutor in the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme working with Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay and Dhurga students in the Master’s of Indigenous Language Education program at the University of Sydney; as a reader of names for ANU graduation ceremonies; as a marker and tutor for such courses as Structure of English, Language and Society, Cross-cultural Communication, and Language and Social Interaction; even as a research assistant on a study of phonetic variation in Central Vanuatu by University of Melbourne linguist Rosey Billington.