I completed my doctorate in Anthropology in the subfields of linguistics and Mesoamerican indigenous studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. I also hold a MA in linguistics from San Francisco State University and BA's in anthropology and philosophy from the University of California Davis. I have teaching experience at both large public universities and small liberal arts colleges. I consider myself an interdisciplinary scholar, but my work centers in cultural, linguistic, and visual anthropology. My main interests include discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, syntax, semantics and semiotics, the role of media technologies in communication, language maintenance and change and the relationship between image and language. I pursue these interests in the documentation of Mesoamerican indigenous languages, and their histories and cultures, from an indigenous perspective. I have recently expanded these interests to understand the relationship between culture and public health.

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My current research projects include the study of political metaphors and the relationship between language (broadly), grammar, image and media technologies in pre-Columbian Mayan texts. This project also involves an examination of language change and language's relationship to history. I also am studying the relationship between political metaphors in both language and image in the COVID-19 pandemic and their role in the production of truth.  Another research project I am working on is the study of the syntax of Copala Triqui's clause linkage types. See my RESEARCH tab for more information on these projects and my other research interests.

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