Yourdanis Sedarous is an Egyptian American immigrant of Coptic heritage. She regularly uses English, Egyptian Arabic, and code-switched English/Egyptian Arabic in her everyday speech. Because of her linguistic background, her research program often highlights the theoretical relevance and empirical richness provided from investigating multilingual utterances. She pursues an integrated, data driven approach to the scientific study of language by applying experimental methods to investigate both qualitatively and quantitatively the language knowledge and use of various bilingual communities, and she extends these results to inform our theories, specifically our theoretical approaches to syntax. Methodologically, she has spent a significant amount of time researching, testing, and extending different methodologies that are more inclusive of underrepresented languages and populations of language users.

Marlyse is a a contact linguist and morphosyntactician specializeed in Pidgin and Creole languages (and their source languages), and in theories of language emergence, language contact and change.
She has a particular interest in cognition and theoretical models of language contact & language emergence. With collaborators, she uses experimental methods (involving artificial language learning) investigating how languages and their speakers converge, diverge and innovate in multilingual settings. She also use fieldwork data and tools from Generative Syntax to study the grammatical properties of Pidgins and Creoles.
Her current research investigates the cognitive processes involved in contact situations and focuses on the role of convergence in L2 acquisition (Baptista, Gelman & Beck, 2016), bilingualism and creole genesis and development (Baptista, 2006; 2020).

Felicia’s interests are in language contact, typology, and ideology. More specifically, she has investigated contact typology and ideology in signed languages, and interrogated sociolinguistic typology in signed languages by incorporating insights from Creole theorists. These interests relate to developing an understanding of causal motivations behind the use and change of linguistic systems, with an emphasis on describing and clarifying the role of language ideology in the use of spoken language linguistic resources in signed languages. In terms of pedagogy, she has worked on incorporating minoritised languages in linguistics classrooms by developing concrete data sets on sign languages and Creoles for undergraduate use, with the aim of moving against exoticisation of these languages. This exemplifies an additional theme in Felicia’s work of identifying and actively moving against exceptionalistion within linguistics.

Sophia is interested in variation and change within Creole languages from a synchronic perspective, particularly with regards to phonetic and phonological inventories. Her research currently focuses on the Cabo Verdean diaspora in New England asking questions such as: How do sound systems change in diasporic settings? How do speakers accommodate dialectal variation? What ideological and social factors drive contact phenomena in diasporic communities? In pursuit of answers to these questions, she recruits from a range of methodologies including phonetic analysis, bi/multilingualism, and social network analysis. Sophia is also passionate about pursuing her passion beyond traditional academic mediums. She seeks ways to engage with projects related to the communities she studies as well as ways to incorporate her knowledge in pedagogical contexts.

Alicia’s research uses corpus and experimental methods while incorporating syntax, historical linguistics, comparative linguistics, pragmatics and sociolinguistics to research the pragmatics and sociolinguistic components of determiner constructions. She is also interested in research in linguistics pedagogy; she considers teaching linguistics her true love, and strives to make her classroom one where her students learn to recognize their own unique language expertise, unlearn linguistic bias, and celebrate the different language experiences of their peers and community members.

Ariana's work is at the intersection of language contact and language documentation. She explores typological similarities and differences among three languages in contact: Transylvanian Saxon (an endangered Germanic language), German, and Romanian. She works with Transylvanian Saxon speakers in two distinct linguistic ecologies (Romania and Germany) to answer theoretical questions related to linguistic and social factors that influence contact-induced transfer. In this process, Ariana documents grammatical aspects of Transylvanian Saxon that have not been explored in previous work.

Moira’s dissertation (completed in 2022) centers on the historical development of the Koreanic language, Jejueo, an endangered language spoken on Jeju Island. Her research uses historical, phonetic and sociolinguistic methods to consider the effects of language contact on East Asian languages and dialects, particularly in terms of morphological and phonological change. Moira is also developing a talking dictionary of Jejueo, which will serve as an oral repository of the language for community members and scientists in Jejueo, Korean, Japanese and English.

Joy’s research centers on high-contact and minoritized languages, such as Creoles like Kwéyòl Donmnik, as well as on multifunctional and discourse-pragmatic elements, such as pragmatic markers (e.g., Kwéyòl èben ‘well’, English well, French bon ‘well’). She is also passionate about the inclusion of minoritized languages in linguistics pedagogy and research and is engaged in collaborative work on the linguistic and professional experiences of Black faculty in the language sciences. Alongside corpus analyses and experimental methods, Joy turns to metalinguistic surveys and interviews with language users to carry out her research. She views her scholarship as an opportunity to spark ah-ha moments about varieties and features of language that are stigmatized or overlooked.

Wil is a sociolinguist interested in the intricate dynamics of language and society. His research primarily revolves around the multilingual landscape of the Philippines and Wider (South)east Asia. He explores language variation, change, and contact, examining the interplay between language and culture. He employs a broad range of research techniques, including corpus-based analysis, experimental methods, ethnographic fieldwork, and computational approaches. Through these methods, Wil examines diverse datasets encompassing natural speech and social media data, yielding valuable insights into language dynamics. His expertise extends to the study of Sino-Philippine languages such as Lánnang-uè, as well as East Asian languages like Putonghua/Mandarin, Hokkien, and Colloquial Singapore English (Singlish).

Danielle is interested in how properties of the cognitive system affect language change in various linguistic ecologies, including those which give rise to pidgins and creoles. Her dissertation research used artificial language learning methodology to explore how biases in language learning and use shape typological tendencies regarding the expression of negation. She is also passionate about teaching practices that recognize and affirm students’ diverse linguistic repertoires and has served as a Graduate Student Instructional Consultant at UM's Center for Research on Learning & Teaching.