I inhabit a number of different roles in my professional life, all of which focus on the region of Southeast Asia. At UNC, I administer the Bringing Southeast Asia Home grant and work with faculty, students, and administrators to grow Southeast Asian studies. Much of my research has been undertaken in conjunction with peoples living in the uplands of mainland Southeast Asia and their diasporas, which locally includes the K’nyaw (Karen), Montagnard, and Hmong communities. I am interested in how individuals in these communities understand and interact with conceptions of indigeneity and self-determination. I am trained as a theoretical phonologist and phonetician, with a focus on languages spoken in Southeast Asia, particularly Mon-Khmer languages. I have an ongoing interest in the maintenance and preservation of lesser spoken languages, in part because linguistic rights and language diversity are strong indicators of human rights, biological diversity, class (in)equality and so on.

Ph.D., Cornell University, 2014

M.A., University of North Carolina, 2005

B.A., University of Virginia, 2003