I'm a Reader in Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. As a sociophonetician, I study the social aspects of phonetic (speech) variation. My research focuses differences in speech among speakers of different social backgrounds and in different social contexts. I'm interested in variation as a social signal and the impact of accent on speakers' credibility and economic success.
​
My BA is from the University of Arizona, where I worked with Malcah Yaeger-Dror. My MA and PhD are from Stanford, where I worked with Penelope Eckert and John Rickford. Before coming to Edinburgh in 2010, I was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford, working with Deborah Cameron and Rosalind Temple.