Research
As of May 2021, I have left academia. I now work as Materials Lead at Gorilla Experiment Builder, writing documentation and supporting researchers in building online experiments. This site is an archive of my research and publications.
My research focused on the acquisition and evolution of word meanings. On the acquisition level, I was interested in how differences in language input affect the acquisition of abstract word meanings, potentially leading to variation in the development of higher-order thinking skills. On an evolutionary level, I was interested in how cultural transmission amplifies individual-level learning and communicative pressures to result in structured word meanings that are shared within a speech community.
Most recently, I was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at University College London, working with Elizabeth Wonnacott. Previously, I was a postdoc at the University of Chicago, working with Susan Goldin-Meadow on the Language Development Project. I did my PhD in the Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit at the University of Edinburgh, supervised by Kenny Smith, Simon Kirby and Nik Gisborne.
