I am interested in how and why individuals differ in their perception, production, and lexical processing of non-native speech. In particular, I am interested to what extent individual linguistic factors (such as language background), as well as extralinguistic factors (such as musical background or working memory) jointly determine the ease with which non-native speech is processed.
I completed my PhD in Linguistics supervised by Dr Brechtje Post (entry 10-2018) with a main research interest in how adults learn speech ('pronunciation') in a second language. My PhD project focused on the L2 acquisition of lexical tone in the domains of perception, production and vocabulary learning, and how the learning of tone is influenced by first language, experience with music, and general cognitive abilities. I take a psycholinguistic approach to this, but with a strong focus on phonology and phonetics.
In my undergraduate (at SOAS, London) I studied Economics and Japanese and I have lived and worked in Japan for almost 3 years. I therefore also have an interest in Japanese linguistics and phonology, in particular the lexical pitch that the language employs. I have also recently conducted a side-study that investigated L2 acquisition of nasality in Brazilian Portuguese.