I am an Associate Professor in English Linguistics at Ghent University. I specialize in second language acquisition and phonology (the sound systems of language). Research topics which have come up in my research are voicing contrasts, the perception and production of vowels, the relation between orthography and phonology, child second language phonology and intelligibility. I also have a keen interest in second language proficiency and how the acquisition of language structure and proficiency development are related to one another. I'm teaching courses in English linguistics (Ba1), Phonology (Ba2) and Old and Middle English (Ma).
I obtained my PhD from Ghent University in 2006 on the acquisition of the English laryngeal system by native speakers of (Belgian) Dutch. In the academic year 2006-2007 I was a visiting scholar in the Linguistics Department of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, thanks to a grant of the Francqui Foundation/B.A.E.F. As a post-doctoral researcher I worked on the relation between L2 perception and production (F.W.O. grant, 2007-2010), the development of phonological representations in child L2 learners (F.W.O. grant, 2010-2014) and on media-induced acquisition of English by children in Flanders (Post-doctoral Assistant, 2014-2016). From 2017-2021 I worked as an Assistant Professor in Dutch as a Second Language in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication (UGent), where I was involved in setting up the L2 Dutch module in the teacher training programme. I'm now working in the English Section of the Linguistics Department.
