Graduate Students
Graduate Students
Lucas Adelino
Abigail Amick
abalam@unc.edu
B.A. Linguistics and German, University of Texas at Austin, 2020.
Abigail is a second-year MA student. Her research interests are phonetics and phonology, particularly the interface between the two. Her current work involves prosodic borrowing in speech islands and the sound systems of Sgaw Karen.
Cassidy Amundsen
Trey Anthony
Sage Aviles
avisa@unc.edu
B.A. Linguistics, Minors: Spanish/ Latin American Caribbean Studies
SUNY New Paltz, 2022
Sage is a first year M.A. student whose current interests include sociolinguistics and semantics, but they are excited to learn more about pragmatics and psycholinguistics. They wish to pursue the hispanic linguistics field, and focus on dialectal variation, as well as potential multilingual variation, on the sociolinguistic level.
Jen Boehm, formerly Griffin
jengriff@email.unc.edu
B.A. Linguistics and Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009
M.A. Linguistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011
Jen is a Ph.D. student who is mainly interested in language documentation, dialect variation, and phonological models of variation. Her current research involves documenting the phonetic and phonological differences between the various dialects of Sgaw Karen that are spoken by the Karen community in Chapel Hill.
Victoria Brown
Esther Chen
estherchen@unc.edu
B.A. Linguistics and German, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2023
Esther is a first-year M.A. student, whose primary interest is second language acquisition. She has previously examined if and how learners might be able to identify a “default” allomorph when learning the pluralization patterns in an artificial language.
Eliza Cornette Cook
Eliza is continuing as an M.A. student at UNC Chapel Hill after completing her B.A. in Linguistics in August, 2023. Her research interests include cognition, computation, and trade languages. Eliza is particularly interested in the cognitive processes that guide language use, and how we can model them.
Leah Dudley
Jana Gibim De Mattos
Samantha Golden
samanthagolden@unc.edu
B.A. Hispanic Linguistics, B.S. Business Administration, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2018
Samantha is a second year PhD student. Past research has focused on multilingual acquisition in children and the interpretation of emojis in text messages across English and Spanish. Her linguistics interests are focused on Hispanic Linguistics, specifically L2 acquisition for native English speakers, the intersection between cognitive science and linguistics, and pragmatics
J Leo Hirsch
B.A. Political Science and Linguistics, Columbia University, 2018
Leo is a first year M.A. student. His linguistic interests are focused on sociolinguistics and language documentation, with specific focuses on heritage language speakers, Hellenic languages, and queer linguistics. His previous experience includes documentation work on Northern Zazaki with speakers in New York City.
Alyson Hignight
Erin Humphreys
Xuan Hu
Victoria Johnston
brownv@live.unc.edu
B.A. Linguistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2017
Victoria is a third year M.A. student. Her research involves numeral systems in P’urhepecha and the description of Xianju Wu Chinese.
Daisy Kim
kimdaisy@unc.edu
B.A. Linguistics, Computer Science, Emory University, 2022
Daisy is a second year M.A. student. Her linguistics interests are in sociolinguistics and computational linguistics.
Emanuela Likskendaj
Mónica López-Vázquez
As an MD graduate from Mexico, specializing in Audiology & Otoneurology, and holding a Master’s in Creative Writing, Mónica has now transitioned into the Hispanic Linguistics Ph.D. program. She initiated her graduate research in partnership with the UNAM Linguistic Engineering Group conducting a comprehensive study entitled “Emoji Usage in Mexican Spanish Corpus: A Multiple-Method Linguistic Approach”
Building on her analytic background, Mónica employed both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze a database on Heritage Language Learners. Drawing from her findings, she crafted a diagnostic tool aiming to unearth the motivations and requirements of heritage language learners across languages at UNC. This instrument is set to reach a broad audience, targeting both undergraduate and graduate students across various UNC campuses and beyond. The overarching ambition of this survey is to lay foundational insights for specialized course development.
Transitioning into another domain of expertise, Mónica has engaged in impactful projects at the Carolina Institute of Developmental Disabilities. She has been instrumental in localizing, formulating, and translating medical data, diagnostic resources, and tools tailored for the Hispanic community. Her pivotal role in the “Experiences of Spanish-Speaking Families with a Remote Neurodevelopmental Assessment” project is noteworthy. Presently, Mónica is channeling her energies into creating written and audio resources, including a podcast, aimed at assisting Hispanic families with potentially developmentally-challenged children.
In parallel, Mónica is also drafting a proposal focused on advanced instruction and Spanish certification tailored for Healthcare Providers.
Amy Reynolds
amyrey@email.unc.edu
B.A. Linguistics, Interdisciplinary, Minor in German, Hendrix College, 2009
M.A. Linguistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011
Amy’s main interests include phonology, semantics, and the history of English. Her M.A. thesis was on acquisition models of English consonant clusters and she is now studying consonant-cluster reduction in a local refugee community.
Ashton Rooney
Yuhan Sui
Heejeong “Jamie” Wee
weeh2@unc.edu
Heejeong’s main interests are Computational Linguistics and Language Acquisition. Since her prior experiences were mostly about syntax and morphology, they are the fields she is most comfortable with, but she is interested in all the subfields of linguistics. Through the master’s program, she’d like to learn how computers can be utilized to analyze language and how they can aid one’s language learning.
Rebecca Winters
wintersr@live.unc.edu
B.A. Criminal Justice Studies (cum laude), Minor in Psychology and concentration in Russian Studies, University of Dayton, 2014.
Rebecca’s main interests are historical linguistics, writing systems, phonetics and phonology, and modern electronic communication.