Staff Profile

Current Research Project

I joined Newcastle University in 2025 as a Research Associate in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences. I am currently working on the ESRC-funded project "Predicting the timing of talking: How do speaker and listener factors boost effective conversational timing for communicative goals?" led by Dr. Laurence White and Professor Julie Morris.

Qualifications

PhD. in Psychology, University of Edinburgh

Thesis Title: Listening between the lines: the roles of social reasoning and disfluency in the comprehension of ambiguous utterances

MSc in Psychology and Language, University of Edinburgh

BA in Translation and Interpreting, Beijing Foreign Studies University

My research investigates real-time language comprehension, with a particular focus on how listeners use contextual and social cues - such as manner of speech (disfluency), prosody, and speaker intent - to interpret meaning in conversation. I am especially interested in how language processing varies across individuals and populations, and how experimental methods can be adapted to capture this variability more inclusively and ecologically.

I am currently a Research Associate on the ESRC-funded project "Predicting the timing of talking: How do speaker and listener factors boost effective conversational timing for communicative goals?". This project examines how both speaker- and listener-side factors contribute to the generation of timing predictions in spoken interaction, with particular attention to turn-taking in dialogue. It includes work with both neurotypical and clinical populations such as people with aphasia.

Before joining Newcastle University, I completed my PhD at the University of Edinburgh, where I explored the role of social reasoning and disfluency in the comprehension of ambiguous utterances. I conducted a series of eye-tracking and mouse-tracking experiments to examine how disfluencies like uh influence listeners' interpretation of scalar terms such as some, and how these effects are modulated by individual differences such as Autism Quotient. I also developed a web-based mouse-tracking paradigm and applied statistical modelling (e.g., GAMMs and BDOTS) to capture the time course of listeners' interpretation processes.

I am committed to open and reproducible science, and have consistently shared my materials, data, and analysis code on the Open Science Framework. My PhD research has also led to collaborative work across projects and disciplines, and has informed undergraduate supervision and teaching, particularly in research methods and experimental design.