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 on documenting and analyzing differences in vowel, consonant, and prosodic production among speakers of different social backgrounds and in different social contexts. I'm interested in the social signalling potential of variation, as well as its potential commodity value, and the impact of accent variation on speakers' credibility and economic success.
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I was raised in Flagstaff, Arizona. My BA in Linguistics is from the University of Arizona, where I was mentored by Dr. Malcah Yaeger-Dror. My MA and PhD in Linguistics are from Stanford University, where I was supervised by Professors Penelope Eckert and John Rickford. Before joining the University of Edinburgh 2010, I was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford, working with Professor Deborah Cameron and Dr. Rosalind Temple.