Ziru Chen (she/her) is interested in phonetics and laboratory phonology, particularly topics in speech production and perception. She is from Zhejiang, China. She received her B.A. in Chinese Language and Literature from Peking University and her MSc in Phonetics from the University of Edinburgh. Her research has been focused on the variation and change in multidimensional contrasts in Wu Chinese. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, playing the piano, swimming, and wandering around the city she lives in.
Ryan Chon is interested in the intersections between phonological typology, sociolinguistic history, and Indigenous studies. His current research investigates both synchronic and diachronic phonology in Naduhup and Saami languages, but also has experience in Papuan and Romance linguistics from his time at Boston University, where he received his BA/MA. He is transferring to McGill after two years in the PhD program at the University of Washington. In his free time, he likes making and listening to music, cooking, reading, and being in nature.
Natalia Feu (she/her) is passionate about phonology, and particularly, analyzing the syllable structure of languages that seem to flout established phonotactic constraints. She has worked primarily with Lushootseed, a Coast Salish language. She is from Seattle, Washington and completed her B.A. Honours in Linguistics, with minors in Anthropology and Environment, at McGill University. In her spare time, she enjoys climbing (including human tower building), reading, and working on her ASL.
Bess Frerichs is interested in psycholinguistics, disfluency, and speech breathing. She completed her B.A. in Linguistics at the University of Oregon, where she wrote an honors thesis on the relationship between planning scope and the distribution of filled pauses (e.g., uh and um) in spontaneous speech. Bess enjoys hiking, playing video games (especially the Legend of Zelda series), and exploring museums and zoos.
Ilya Gritsenko specializes in experimental syntax and variation in language, especially in processes of agreement, mostly working with subject-verb agreement in Russian. Additionally, they have an interest in Jewish languages, especially underdocumented modern Hasidic varieties of Yiddish. Their B.A. in Linguistics was completed at Moscow State University. In their free time, Ilya enjoys studying philosophy and politics, cooking (and especially baking!) for groups of people, competing in shooting sports, photography, and creating 3D animations for obscure indie video games.
Baran Günay Baran Günay (he/him) is primarily interested in morpho-syntax and fieldwork, especially agreement. His work so far has focused on conjunct agreement in Hamshentsnag, an endangered Armenian variety spoken in Turkey. He completed his B.A. in English Translation and Interpreting at İstanbul Aydın University, and his M.A. in Linguistics at Boğaziçi University. Outside of linguistics, he plays electric guitar and writes music somewhere in tech/prog death metal territory. He also follows motorsports, plays tactical shooter games, and has never quite gotten over Minecraft.
Lishan Li is from Guangdong, China. She received her bachelor’s degree from Shandong University and her master’s degree from Beijing Normal University. Her research interests are mainly in phonetics, with a particular focus on speech perception, speech production, phonetic variation, and sound change. Outside of linguistics, she enjoys spending time with animals and taking care of plants.
Nagihan Lüle completed her BSc in Mathematics and recently finished her MA in Linguistics, both at Boğaziçi University. She is primarily interested in syntax and semantics; specifically, her work so far has focused on ellipsis and null arguments in Turkish. Outside of linguistics, Nagihan enjoys solving Sudoku, watching films, and discovering new places.
Franklin Ma (he/him) is interested in using linguistic theory to improve language and speech technologies, particularly by investigating how statistical models can acquire linguistic capabilities more efficiently from limited data, especially for dialects and low-resource languages. He received his BA in Computer Science and Cognitive Systems, Emphasis in Language, from the University of British Columbia, and completed a year-long exchange at the University of Tokyo. In his free time, he enjoys going out on walks, exploring new restaurants, and learning languages.
Anna Westwig (she/her) was raised in Ithaca, NY, USA with two older brothers, a variable number of chickens, and a pun-ishing amount of word play. She has B.A.s from Wellesley College (’25) for Classical Civilization and Cognitive Science, where she fell in love with playing the carillon, flute, and psycholinguistics. She spent a year abroad at Oxford and was surprised to learn they made the children do the accent, too! After graduating, she took a Fulbright to teach English in Tbilisi, Georgia, where she did a lot of inadvisable hitchhiking, courted vehicular manslaughter, and became obsessed with the uvular ejective. Her interests include speech perception/processing, individual difference in language use, sound change, and the ad-hoc onomatopoeias people produce when describing birdsong.
Emma Wrenn is particularly interested in phonetic documentation, especially of Mesoamerican languages, and in secondary articulations such as labialization. She has worked with P’urhepecha (isolate; Michoacán, Mexico) and San Juan Quiahije Chatino (Otomanguean; Oaxaca, Mexico) in the past and hopes to continue her work on Chatino languages in the future. She completed her B.A. and M.A. in Linguistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (United States). Outside of linguistics, Emma enjoys crocheting, Dungeons and Dragons, and playing various wind instruments, especially in historical performance ensembles.
Shun Yamazaki is primarily interested in theoretical syntax and its interface with phonology and morphology. His interest mainly lies in Japanese syntax and its interfaces but he is also intereted in studying other languages. He is from Japan and completed his M.A. in Linguistics at Sophia University in Tokyo. Outside of linguistics, he enjoys hiking, playing with dogs, and watching sitcoms.
