I love working with graduate students, and am particularly equipped & excited to supervise students working on phonetic and phonological variation, language change over the lifespan, second dialect acquisition, and language & place. If you are interested in working with me on one or some of these topics, here are some things to know:
• Yes, I am in principle accepting new PhD students for Fall 2026 (for which the application period has already closed) and Fall 2027 (applications due in December 2026); if that changes, I'll update this page. I don’t necessarily take a student every year - the Sociolinguistics concentration is allotted just 1 or 2 PhD spots each cycle, and there are three tenure-line faculty in the concentration who supervise doctoral students. We don’t decide in advance who gets a student each year; it all depends on who is in the pool, who’s the best fit for a specific advisor, and who we think will get the most out of the program at Georgetown.
• If you would like to work with me as your primary advisor/dissertation committee Chair, you will need to enroll in the PhD program as part of the Sociolinguistics concentration. I also often serve on dissertation committees for doctoral students working in the Theoretical Linguistics concentration or in Spanish Linguistics, but in those cases the primary advisor will be someone from that concentration or department, respectively.
• PhD admissions at Georgetown are done centrally, at the department level, and not by applying to specific faculty members, so there’s no need to email me your statement of purpose or CV. I’ll see it when I see your application!
• If you have general questions about the PhD program in the Department of Linguistics, please first read our web page for prospective students. If your question isn't answered there, please contact the Graduate Program Coordinator, Erin Esch Pereira.
• If you have specific questions for me (that can’t be answered by reading through this website or scanning some of my recent work), I’m happy to correspond briefly by email. Unfortunately I won’t be able to meet in person or virtually; if I were to agree to all such requests I wouldn’t have time left to meet my current students, and there are equity issues as well (applicants who are in the right time zones and who have been socialized to ask professors for meetings shouldn’t get an advantage over those in different circumstances). That said, if we’re both at the same conference (I can usually be found at NWAV and the LSA), I’m happy to chat at a coffee break!
• Some things about me as a graduate advisor and what I value:
I aim to give my students the support and perspective they need to produce meaty, intriguing, rigorous academic work while also maintaining a good life (which includes physical and mental health).
I want my students to cultivate the skills to succeed in whatever career path they choose, whether that’s academia, industry, or something else (Given our alt-ac-oriented MLC programming and location in Washington, DC, Georgetown is a great place to build a pluripotent career foundation, by the way.)
As a first-gen college student and academic, I am aware that the myriad subtle yet crucial-to-master conventions of academia are not innate or obvious, and I do my best to help students navigate and learn them.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed/unsure about the process of applying to graduate school, check out this recording of an LSA webinar sponsored by the First Generation Access and Equity Committee, Applying to Grad School: Perspective from a First-Gen Grad Student. The webinar was led by PhD student Luis Gaytán-Soto (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), who prepared some incredibly informative and helpful slides; Ander Beristain (Saint Louis University) and I were also there to provide the faculty perspective on grad applications and admissions. The session was geared towards first gen students but is helpful for anyone who is not very familiar with the structures and processes of graduate school (which is probably most people, unless you come from a family of professors!)