I am interested in the interdisciplinary study of speech, sound and language. My research focuses on how people produce the sounds of speech, with a focus on the physical mechanisms of speech and how this varies between languages and dialects. I do fieldwork and laboratory research to address descriptive and theoretical questions in this area, using methods such as acoustic analysis, vocal tract imaging, articulatory modelling, statistical modelling, and fieldwork. Much of my research is cross-linguistic and cross-dialectal, focusing on languages such Punjabi, Scottish Gaelic, Twi, Sylheti, and varieties of English across the UK and beyond. My interests cluster into the following areas:

Acoustic-articulatory dynamics of speech production 
My current research investigates the dynamic aspects of speech production using acoustic analysis, ultrasound tongue imaging and electromagnetic articulography. I am particularly interested in the relationship between dynamic vocal tract kinematics and phonological structure, as well as how these relations vary between different linguistic systems.

• Targets and dynamics in speech (with Patrycja Strycharczuk, Manchester; AHRC-funded 2019-22)
• Dialect variation in acoustic-articulatory dynamics (with Emily Gorman, Lancaster)
• Articulatory dynamics of palatalisation contrasts in Scottish Gaelic (with Claire Nance, Lancaster)
• Acoustics, articulation and perception of mergers in Australian English (with Chloé Diskin; Rosey Billington; Debbie Loakes, Melbourne; Hywel Stoakes, Auckland; Simon Gonzalez, ANU)

Phonetics of bilingualism and language contact 
I am also interested in the development of new accents out of bilingualism and language contact. My PhD investigated phonetic variation and social practice in a multiethnic school in northern England. Since then, I have worked with South Asian communities in the UK and studied language contact in West Africa. My research in this area increasingly focuses on child bilingualism in large immigrant communities.

• Acquisition of liquids by Sylheti-English bilingual children (with Kathleen McCarthy, QMUL)
• Intergenerational phonological transmission in a Punjabi-English bilingual community in Blackburn, Lancashire (with Maya Zara, Lancaster)
• Articulation of [ATR] contrasts in West Africa (with Claire Nance, Lancaster)

Sociophonetics and dialect variation 
In addition to the above, I work on various aspects of sociophonetics and dialect variation, including segmental and intonational variation in northern Englishes, the social meanings of variation, and new methods for analysing dialect variation.

• Phonetic and phonologial variation in North West England (with Claire Nance, Lancaster)
• Crowdsourcing regional phonetic variation across England (with Adrian Leemann, Bern; George Brown, Lancaster; David Britain, Bern; Tam Blaxter, Cambridge; Eleanor Walker, Lancaster)

I am interested in supervising students who wish to carry out research in the following areas: phonetics, sociophonetics, articulatory phonetics, speech production, dialect variation, phonetic fieldwork, sound change, langauge variation and change. I particularly welcome projects that make use of our lab's specialist instrumentation, which includes electromagnetic articulography (EMA), high-speed ultrasound, electropalatography (EPG), electroglottography (EGG), and aerodynamics systems.

I teach on the following courses:

• LING102 English Language
• LING223 English Phonetics
• LING327 Advanced English Phonetics
• LING416 Experimental Phonetics

In 2016 I was awarded Lancaster University's Undergraduate Teaching Award, which is a university-wide prize based on student nominations and testimonials. I have also been nominated for Best Dissertation Supervisor and Best Student Advisor awards at Lancaster, as well as Postgraduate Tutor of the Year when I was a PhD student at Sheffield.