I am a law clerk to a judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and previous Rappaport Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School (2023-2024), where I taught “Language and the Law: Beyond the Canons.” My research focuses on the implications language and linguistics have for the legal system and analysis of legal linguistic policy. For example, I have argued here that failures in the judicial system to account for dialectal differences in English are cognizable as due process issues. And here I try to make guides for lawyers dealing with nonstandard English varieties in their practices.
Aside from my research, I’ve helped represent asylum seekers. I have also done policy work in the law and neuroscience space with the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior in conjunction with Massachusetts General Hospital as a Fellow in Law and Applied Neuroscience.
I love teaching, having taught high school Spanish in Atlanta where I grew up and always having a blast learning with the folks at Harlem Clemente. In college, I studied Political Science, Economics, and Linguistics, focusing on the relationship between the Ainu language and Japanese. Unsurprisingly, I’m a language nerd (my current fixation is ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi!).