​

I am a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. My primary research interest lies in syntax and historical linguistics, in particular:

​

  (i)    How does the syntactic typology of Austronesian languages inform

           the variation vs. uniformity in language design?;

​

  (ii)   How does the synchronic variation among genetically related

           languages inform patterns of language change?;​

​

  (iii)  How does Austronesian comparative linguistics contribute to our

           understanding of the peopling of Southeast Asia and the Pacific?

​

​

To answer these questions, my research focuses on the morphosyntactic typology of Austronesian languages, in particular languages with the so-called "Austronesian-type alignment". Starting from 2024, a joint project with Mary Walworth and Miriam Meyerhoff will tackle (ii)-(iii) via a systematic comparison of western Austronesian with east Polynesian languages under a Marsden standard grant.

 

A secondary focus of my research is linguistic subgrouping. Since 2020, my team and I have been using multidisciplinary data to re-examine the patterns of the Austronesian diaspora under a Marsden Fast Start Grant. Some outputs of our project can be found here, here and here.​

​

I am currently the Editor-in-Chief of Te Reo—the Journal of the New Zealand Linguistic Society. Info about the journal can be found here.