About me

I received my PhD in linguistics from Harvard in 2023. My primary research interests are historical morphology and historical phonology of the Indo-European languages, with emphasis on verbal morphology. My interest in historical linguistics stems primarily from my interest in the languages and history of ancient Italy, Greece, Anatolia, India and Iran. I believe that the study of our ancient and medieval cultures should be rooted in linguistically grounded philology, and likewise that the linguistics of these ancient texts should be studied against the background of their compositional context and transmission history.

Before coming to Harvard, I completed my undergraduate degree in Classics and Indology at Brown University, with equal emphasis on Greek, Latin and Sanskrit language and literature. I spent a rewarding year as a pupil of emeritus professor Shri Narayan Mishra in Varanasi, from whom I obtained the rudiments of Indian philosophy as well as a deep appreciation for the indigenous sciences of the subcontinent. I then completed a Master's degree at Central European University in medieval history, with a focus on Byzantine secular literature and history. During this time, I benefitted from attending courses at the Institut für Sprachwissenschaft at the University of Vienna, where I was introduced to the techniques of rigorous historical grammar.

My work has appeared in the journals Glotta, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Indogermanische Forschungen and Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft. My dissertation, which was directed by Jay Jasanoff and Jeremy Rau and was successfully defended on Dec. 1, 2022, addresses the Indo-European background of Greek presents in -θω (e.g. πλή-θω 'am full').