I am a sociolinguist. I work primarily from variationist approaches. Most of my research has focused on describing dialects of English, and identifying changes in dialects resulting from a range of social and linguistic factors. I am currently focused on "historical sociophonetic" projects to digitise oral history collections that are held in archives, libraries, and museums in order to build resources for acoustic analyses of speakers born in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I am also working with Twitter data to examine grammatical constructions that occur infrequently in spoken English, and have recently entered several collaborations on English language and English language teaching in Cameroon. Public engagement is important to my work, too. I am an Associate Fellow in the Warwick Institute of Engagement, and frequently share knowledge about language and linguistics in media appearances, webinars, presentations, and other events. I welcome inquiries from qualified students who wish to pursue PhD projects in sociophonetics, dialectology, perceptual dialectology, and other areas of language variation and change. I am also happy to supervise undergraduate projects in these areas in connection with Warwick's Undergraduate Research Support Scheme.

I joined Warwick in 2017. I received my PhD in 2014 from the University of Missouri. I taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the United States from 2006 to 2017. I was also previously an officer in the United States Army.