B.A. in German Studies and Linguistics, Oberlin College

M.A. in Anthropology, University of Virginia

Specialties

Endangered languages, ethics of documentation and revitalization, ethnomusicology, Papua New Guinea, speech substitution systems

My work is based in Wamsok, a remote village in the Prince Alexander Mountains of Papua New Guinea (East Sepik Province). My dissertation draws on 18 months of ethnography and linguistic research in this community, with the goal of describing its endangered speech surrogate system. To do this, I aim to document and describe not just this system of communication (which can be whistled, called, spoken, or blown on conch shells or bamboo flutes) but also Abu’ (the endangered language spoken in Wamsok), and the full communicative ecology of this village, of which these ways of speaking are emergent parts — along with music, cell phone communication, and Tok Pisin, the national lingua franca.