PhD Linguistics & English Language

Psychology, Linguistics, Communication, Evolutionary Biology

I was born in Calgary, Alberta- the texas of Canada, and took a rather circuitous route to starting my PhD here. Originally I studied Psychology at the University of Calgary with a specific interest in abnormal psychology, but soon discovered that it wasn't for me and focused more heavily on the sciences before transferring to The University of Lethbridge for a BSc in Neuroscience.

Eventually, after doing some undergraduate research work in the biology department with hissing cockroaches and in the psychology department doing some speech analysis and basic psycholinguistic work I decided to switch back to psychology with a focus on Evolution and Behavior.

I completed my BSc under the supervision of Dr. Drew Rendall and subsequently stayed on to complete my MSc. in Psychology (Evolution and Behavior) with Dr. Rendall. My work focused on a more careful examination of the Bouba-Kiki effect, the classic psycholinguistic phenomenon. It was a rewarding experience that got me interested more broadly in the types of perception and production biases that might be inherent in human neural and behavioral organization, and further how these biases might be related to language acquisition and modeling.