Graduate Students
Graduate Students
Alex Austin-Trongo
alexcat@live.unc.edu
B.A., Spanish, Minor in French, University of North Carolina at Asheville, 2017
Alex is a third year M.A. student whose interests are mainly in historical and sociolinguistics, including language evolution, language interaction, and issues relating to LGBTQIA+ identity.
Trey Anthony
Yuanchen “Blaine” Bao
yuanchenbao@unc.edu
B.S. Journalism, Northern Arizona University, 2018
M.A. TESOL, Pepperdine University, 2020
Blaine is a first-year M.A. Linguistics student at UNC-Chapel Hill. His interests include second language acquisition, TESOL and phonology.
Cay Bappe
Cay Bappe is a first year M.A. student whose linguistic interests include Second Language Acquisition, World Englishes, and Phonetics/Phonology. She has previously collaborated on research projects investigating TESL topics, including observing English pronunciation of non-native learners and intelligibility ratings by native English speakers.
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
Benjamin Coleman
Leah Dudley
Dylan Elliott
dylanpe@email.unc.edu
B.A. English: Professional Writing & Spanish, University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2018
Dylan Elliott is a first year MA Student whose linguistic interests include Computational Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, and Language Revitalization. In the past he has researched Hispanic Language Maintenance in Rural and Urban Settings in North Carolina.
Sean Foley
sfoley3@email.unc.edu
B.A. German, B.A. International Studies, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2015
Sean is a first year MA students who is very interested in language documentation, particularly of endangered Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in Southwestern China. Earlier this year, he did some brief fieldwork in China’s Yunnan province on a few endangered Ngwi languages, which were previously undocumented. In addition, he is interested in the phonetics/phonology of Sinitic varieties and Tibeto-Burman languages, experimental phonetics, historical linguistics, language evolution, and computational linguistics.
Samantha Golden
samanthagolden@unc.edu
B.A. Hispanic Linguistics, B.S. Business Administration, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2018
Samantha is a first year MA student. Her linguistics interests are focused on Hispanic Linguistics, specifically L2 acquisition for native English speakers, the intersection between cognitive science and linguistics, and pragmatics.
Jolie Hiers
joliee@email.unc.edu
B.A. Spanish, B.S. Foreign Language Education, College of Charleston, 2018
Jolie is a first year MA student. Her linguistics interests include sociolinguistics, pragmatics, contact linguistics, language change, and cross-cultural communication. She has done research on the sociolinguistic topic of forms of personal address in Costa Rica.
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.
Andrew Knudsen
B.S. Biomedical Engineering, B.S. Mathematics, Minor in Linguistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2021
Andrew is a first year M.A. student. He is most interested in historical linguistics, epigraphy, and decipherment, but finds any area of linguistics fascinating. Through prior work, he has analyzed the effect of Spanish orthography on prosody and created a conlang with its own writing system.”
Mónica López-Vázquez
With a Medical Degree and a specialty in Audiology & Otoneurology, and a Master’s in Creative Writing, Mónica decided to start a new, nevertheless related academic path in Hispanic Linguistics. She is an experienced editor, and she is currently working on the translation and cultural adaptation of diagnostic tests for the Hispanic community. She is also working on the pragmatic and sociolinguistic analysis of emoji in a chat Corpus using Python.
Colin Nixon
B.A. Anthropology, Minors in Linguistics and Classical Studies, Purdue University, 2021
Colin is a first year MA student whose main areas of interest are historical linguists, linguistic anthropology, Slavic and Uralic languages, phonology, and syntax.
Janani Ramadurai
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.
Jarem Saunders
Martha “Emily” Thomas
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.