Almas Ashraf

Almas Ashraf is a second-year Ph.D. student in Linguistics. Her research interests are in syntax, information structure, and questions in Hindi-Urdu. She is interested in how sentence structure interacts with meaning and discourse, especially in relation to variation in word order and the interpretation of different question types. 

Ekaterina Ausheva

Ekaterina is a Ph.D. student in Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on second language and heritage language acquisition, bilingual language processing, and cross-linguistic interaction, with particular emphasis on Russian–English bilingualism. Her work examines how linguistic and individual differences shape language processing and learning across languages. She is also a member of the Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Lab and serves as an SRS Coordinator for the 2026–2027 academic year. 

Courtney Bailey

Courtney Bailey is an M.A. student specializing in sociolinguistics, with additional interests in second language acquisition and sociophonetics. Her research examines bias and power dynamics in language, particularly how linguistic authority is granted to some speakers and withheld from others. Her related interests include language ideology, accent perception, linguistic legitimacy and multilingualism. 

Courtney holds a Ph.D. in Education with a specialization in English Language Learning. Her dissertation examined native speakerism in English language teaching and advanced the Multi-Axis Model of Linguistic Legitimacy. She also holds an M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction (ESOL) and a B.A. in Spanish. 

Noah Brandon

Noah Brandon is a Ph.D. student specializing in historical linguistics and phonology with a secondary interest in sociolinguistics and sociophonetics. His research uses comparative methods and modern dialect data to reconstruct earlier stages of Germanic phonology and to motivate historical sound changes. His M.A. thesis used modern dialect data to examine the ways in which Norse contact conditioned the phonological development of the English varieties spoken in northern England and southern Scotland. Noah earned his M.A. in Linguistics and his B.A. in German from the University of South Carolina. 

Scott Brewer

Scott Brewer is a Ph.D. student in historical linguistics, phonology, and dialectology. His current work focuses on consonant shifts in Germanic and their exponents in dialects of British English. 

Lupita de Leon Garcia

Lupita De Leon Garcia is an M.A. student in Linguistics. 

Kayleigh Fisher

Kayleigh Fisher is a Ph.D. student specializing in sociolinguistics, with a secondary field in pragmatics. Her research interests include offensive language and reappropriation, language and media, and humor. Before coming to UofSC, Kayleigh earned her M.A. in Linguistics and TESL from Indiana State University. 

Shannon Gallion

Shannon Gallion is a M.A./Ph.D. student specializing in sociolinguistics with a secondary interest in pragmatics. Their research interests focus on the relationship between language and gender, specifically regarding language used in trans, nonbinary and gender nonconforming communities in English and Romance languages. 

Sam Haasse

Sam Haase is an M.A. student in Linguistics. 

Jayla Hall

Jayla Hall is an M.A. student in Linguistics. 

Michael Highlander

Michael's primary research interest is comparative Germanic linguistics with a focus on historical phonology, morphology and morpho-phonology, incorporating dialectal evidence. He has done work in the grouping of Germanic languages using phonological and morphological isoglosses. His dissertation is on the development of diphthongs in Bavarian German dialects. He is minoring in German Literature and is interested in Medieval and 18th and 19th German Literature. 

Yuxin Jiang

Yuxin Jiang is a Ph.D. student studying sociolinguistics and pragmatics. Her research interests cover (im)politeness, humor, power negotiation, identity construction and language ideology, particularly within digital spaces. Her M.A. thesis examined the impoliteness strategies in Chinese online comments during the pandemic. Yuxin earned her M.A. from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and her B.A. from Lanzhou University. 

Jihye kim

I am a first-year Ph.D. student, and my research interests lie in discourse syntax, investigating syntactic phenomena that map onto multiple functions within natural language usage. The main objective of my research is to explain the discrepancy between form and function—how a single form can convey multifaceted meanings depending on context. 

Hyunhwa Kim

I am a PhD student focusing on corpus linguistics, second language acquisition (SLA), and computational methods, with a growing interest in psycholinguistics, particularly how the mental lexicon develops in second language learners. My current research examines how L2 English learners acquire argument structure constructions, drawing on corpus analysis, acceptability judgment experiments, and computational modeling. Before coming to USC, I completed my M.A. in Applied Linguistics at Georgia State University. Visit Hyunhwa's research site for more.

Anastasiia Ladnova

Anastasiia Ladnova is a PhD student in Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests include experimental second language acquisition, psycholinguistics and bilingual language processing. Her research primarily employs experimental methods, including eye tracking. Anastasiia received her MA in Psycholinguistics from Saint Petersburg State University, where she studied the processing of multimodal information. She received her BA in Lithuanian from Saint Petersburg State University, where she studied Lithuanian language and linguistics. 

Chandler Nichols

Isabell Ortiz Calzada

Isabella Ortiz Calzada is an M.A. student in Linguistics

Olivia Paglia

Originally from Jacksonville, Florida, Liv Paglia receive a B.A. in German from USC in 2019, as well as an M.A. in German Literature in 2022. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Linguistics. Her main field of study is historical phonology, specializing in the Germanic languages, with a secondary field in Medieval Germanic Literature. Her current research involves the phenomenon of breaking and general diphthongization in the Germanic languages. She recently presented on the topic of breaking in Old Norse and Old English at the 2025 Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference. Liv is also a Senior Teaching Assistant at USC where she teaches Beginning German I and II, as well as German Culture and Civilization.

William Saccavino

Will Saccavino is a second-year Master’s student in Linguistics. Their primary areas of interest are theoretical syntax, elliptical phenomena, and left-edge deletion in English. Their research is on the conditions and constraints of dropping subject pronouns and auxiliaries in English. As a secondary interest, they also study the impacts of bilingualism, metalinguistic awareness, and pedagogical style on the acquisition of metalinguistic knowledge. 

Tia Sadlon  

Tia Sadlon is a Ph.D. student studying sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. Her research interests include identity construction, power dynamics, and language variation and change. Her MSc thesis was an ethnographic study of cricket teams in (London)Derry, examining sociophonetic differences between ethnoreligious groups. She earned her MSc in Applied Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and her B.S. in Psychology and Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Visit Tia's research site. 

Nadra Salman

Nadra Salman is a Ph.D. student in Linguistics. 

Emma Sanford

Emma Sanford is an M.A. student in Linguistics. 

Shana Scucchi

Shana is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in Second Language Acquisition of Sociopragmatics. Her current research focuses on the intersection of (Im)Politeness, L2 Identity and Agency, and how Task-Based Language Teaching impacts the acquisition of different aspects of L2 sociopragmatics. 

Ada Shavo

Ada is a Ph.D. student in Linguistics specializing in Linguistic Anthropology. She is interested in studying language ideology, specifically regarding standard language ideology in education, strategies of resistance to language discrimination, and language and gender. Prior to attending USC, Ada completed her B.A. in Linguistics at UMass Amherst, where she researched strategies of language standardization and resistance in tutoring contexts. 

Hershel Tanner

Hershel Tanner is an M.A. student in Linguistics. 

Sarah Wilson

Sarah C. Wilson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Linguistics Program, specializing in Psycholinguistics. She received her B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2018), and her M.A. in Linguistics from the University of South Carolina, Columbia (2022). Her research focuses on linguistic alignment and priming in dialogue, the effects of aging on language production, and the neural basis of language. Sarah is a graduate research assistant on the Aging Brain Cohort (ABC) in the Aphasia Lab. 

Xuehan Annie Xie

Xuehan Annie Xie is a Ph.D. student in Linguistics whose research interests center on experimental syntax, particularly language production and processing in neurotypical speakers and in people with aphasia. Visit Annie's research site for more.

Liuxu Yang

Liuxu Yang is a Ph.D. candidate in Linguistics. Her research concentrates on second language acquisition among Mandarin L2 learners and heritage speakers, the interaction between tone and emotion in speech perception, and the teaching of Chinese orthography in the digital age .

Taravat Yazdani

Taravat Yazdani is a Ph.D. student in Linguistics with an interest in experimental semantics and pragmatics. Her research focuses on what leaves linguistic meaning underspecified—particularly in phenomena such as scalar implicature and presupposition and their interaction with verb semantics. She is also interested in the extent to which cognitive abilities such as memory and reasoning contribute to this underspecificity and/or help to resolve it. 

Jiyuan Zhou

Jiyuan Zhou is a Ph.D. student in Linguistics. Her research focuses on sociolinguistics, with a particular interest in language and gender. She examines how gender is expressed, perceived, and processed through language using diverse methods. She received her M.A. in Language Studies, specializing in Corpus Linguistics, from City University of Hong Kong and previously worked as a research assistant there and at The Education University of Hong Kong. Visit Jiyuan's research site for more.