I was born in Canada and graduated with a B.A. Honours from the University of Saskatchewan, focusing on the history of the English language. I came to Australia after completing a year of graduate study in Old Norse at Linacre College Oxford, and worked for a number of years in journalism, public sector communications and government publishing, before returning to academia in 2019.

My PhD research was a historical sociolinguistic analysis of 19th-century of Australian English, with a particular focus on Western Australia. I am currently continuing to investigate dialect evolution in post-colonial Englishes, incuding Australian Aboriginal English.

I am also interested in ESOL. I completed the CELTA in 2016 and have since then spent extended periods teaching research and study skills at UWA's Centre for English Language Teaching.