Most recently, I have been doing research on modelling routinisation in dialogue, and completing a doctoral degree at King's College London, supervised by Prof. Ruth Kempson. This research explores the use of grammars of natural language for dialogue modelling, and was undertaken within the Dynamic Syntax research group.

My initial training in linguistics was completed at the Linguistics Department at the University of Western Australia, gaining both Bachelors (hon.s) and Masters (research) degrees.

I started working life as a teacher, but further study in linguistics led to work as a field linguist, and now to a position as a research linguist. Trying to get some scientific grip on language has led me from descriptive linguistics, to formal modelling of natural language grammars, and then dialogue modelling, and finally to planning and natural language generation.

Along the way, I have explored Wangkatha, Malgana, Nyunga, Wolio, unbounded dependencies in languages of South Sulawesi, context and routinisation in dialogue, and now the generation of natural language. To get here, I have been guided by (to list a few): field work methods, dictionaries, grammars (descriptive & formal), categorial grammars, models of dialogue, dynamic syntax, and theories of the lexicon.

Working in the PENGUIN project provides me with the opportunity to investigate some deeply interesting topics in the computational modelling of natural language, as well as re-explore some earlier areas afresh, all within a superb multi-disciplinary research setting.