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Welcome new graduate students!

We are pleased to announce the following graduate students will be joining the department in the 2024-25 academic year. Please join us in welcoming them!

  • Jiaang Dong

    Jiaang Dong

    My name is Jiaang Dong. I obtained my M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Virginia. My Primary interest in Linguistics includes acoustic and articulatory phonetics. In particular, I am interested in voice quality and studying the interaction between the articulation in the upper vocal tract and that in the laryngeal space across various phonation types. In my free time, I enjoy playing soccer and taking photographs.
  • Desiree (Drae) Handley

    Desiree (Drae) Handley

    Greetings!  My name is Desiree (Drae) Handley.  I was born and live on Kumeyaay, Payómkawichum, and Acjachemen land, but most my family is from Ireland and Sicily.  I recently studied Kumeyaay Studies at Kumeyaay Community College and Cuyamaca College; my earlier undergraduate degree at Indiana University focused on community organizing and political science.  My linguistic interests include community-based language revitalization and pedagogy, language acquisition and immersion, fieldwork, language variation and change, and pragmatics.  I intend to focus on methods shown to develop fluency in passive speakers and language learners, continuing the work of my mentor and teacher, Dr. Stan Rodriguez.  In my free time, I enjoy being outdoors, including hiking, camping, and gardening.
  • Travis Putman

    Travis Putman

    Hello, my name is Travis Putman. I received my B.A. in Linguistics at the University of Iowa and my M.A. in Linguistics at San Diego State University. My primary interest is in phonology. More specifically, my interest lies in the learnability of phonological representations and processes using experimental, computational, and theoretical approaches, especially from a cognitive perspective. As well, some of my past work has looked at linguistic alignment in human-AI dialogue.
  • Tessa Stanier

    Tessa Stanier

    Hi, my name is Tessa Stanier. I graduated from UC San Diego with a B.A. in Linguistics, specializing in language and society. I am primarily interested in the language of politics and persuasion, a topic that I became familiar with when studying the language of anti-vaccine groups during the Covid-19 pandemic. I'm very curious about the differences in the language of various social groups and how nuances in language use come to influence one's perception of the world. In my leisure time, I love running, rock climbing, camping, gardening and anything outdoors.