Academic interests
My primary research interests fall into two main areas: Language typology, with a focus on transitivity and argument structure, and fieldwork-based documentation and description of the languages of the Reef Islands in the southwest Pacific. I am also interested in language contact and historical linguistics, with a focus on how the languages of Solomon Islands' Temotu Province are related to each other and to the rest of the Oceanic language family, and what this can tell us about the settlement history of this region of the Pacific. I'm PI of a research project, funded by the Research Council of Norway and in collaboration with the Australian National University, which uses the Austronesian language family to study the functional underpinnings of transitivity and grammatical relations, and how these grammaticalise.
Courses taught
LING2114 Structure of a lesser-known language
LING4140 Methods in linguistic research
LING4170 Language endangerment and conservation (autumn 2017)
Examen facultatum, linguistics variant
Background
I hold a PhD (cum laude) in linguistics from the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and an MA in linguistics from the University of Oslo. My previous appointments include postdoc positions on the projects Identity Matters: Movement and Place (University of Oslo) and Breaking the Time Barrier: Structural Traces of the Sahul Past (Radboud University Nijmegen), editorial assistant on the Norwegian Dictionary Project (Norsk Ordbok 2014), Visiting Professor at the University of Zürich and Senior Lecturer at the University of Newcastle, Australia.
Partners
Member of the Evolution of Semantic Systems Research consortium
Collaborating researcher on the project 'Ergativity in comprehension and production: language typology and processing' (http://www.research-projects.uzh.ch/p21996.htm)