I’m a linguist who studies the variability inherent in language. In my research, I analyze statistical patterns in large bodies of speech data in order to better understand how and why people talk differently—in different places, in different situations, and over time. I’m particularly interested in theoretical and empirical perspectives on intra-speaker variation.

I am Director of Undergraduate Studies for Linguistics, a co-director of the NYU Sociolinguistics Lab, a PI on the NSF-funded NYC Individual Differences Corpus project, and one of the academic leads of Our Dialects, an online atlas of British English regional dialects. I have published academic articles and book chapters on sociolinguistics, language variation, language change, dialectology, and linguistics pedagogy; I have also served as an expert consultant for media pieces on regional dialects, language change, personal names, and how speakers’ accents can change over time.

Outside of work, I can often be found birding in Washington Square Park.