Research
As of May 2021, I have left academia. 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.
