I am a Singaporean linguist and an Associate Professor at the English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies department of the National University of Singapore. I spent a year at Stanford University as a postdoctoral fellow, after obtaining my PhD at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in December 2014. My stints at both institutions were aided by the Ministry of Education–National University of Singapore Overseas Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the National University of Singapore Overseas Graduate Scholarship.
I am Peranakan Chinese by birth, and am interested in my endangered heritage language, Baba Malay. I seek to understand language change brought about by multilingualism. My specific areas of interest lie in language endangerment, language death, language documentation, creoles, typology, and sociolinguistics. It is my hope that my training in linguistics will better prepare me to contribute towards the revitalisation of Baba Malay. I also enjoy teaching, and I have taught a range of classes (intro to linguistics, intro to linguistics for engineers, semantics and pragmatics, child language, language documentation, and typology, to name a few). I welcome MA and PhD supervisees in the above areas, including supervisees who are interested in embarking on a sociolinguistics project, especially those focusing on contact or heritage languages; or in producing a grammatical description using the functional approach.
In Semester 1 of AY 2026/27, I teach an advanced undergraduate seminar in language typology. In Semester 2, I teach the department's introductory linguistics course.
Outside of research and teaching, I am an Assistant Dean at the Research Division at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
And beyond academia, I enjoy being active, reading too much sci-fi and fantasy, knitting, travelling and spending time with my preschooler!
