New Post-Doctoral Researchers

MSU Linguistics recently hired two new post-docs, Leah Nodar and Joel Berends, to work with the MI Diaries project.

Welcome, Leah & Joel!

Leah Nodar is a Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures. She is a postdoctoral researcher in linguistics on the MI Diaries project. Her research interests include dialect development, network analysis of discourse, and the role of personal investment in a social identity on language continuity and change.

Joel Berends works with the MI Diaries project and as an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at MSU. His work involves youth who are interested in pursuing careers in education as part of MSU’s Community Teachers Program. His scholarship includes work with African and Asian immigrant youth, museum and cultural studies, diasporic literacies, discourse analysis, sports, poetry, and arts-based research and methodologies. His teaching, research, and community-engagement directly include youth in determining and deliberating curriculum, career pathways, and futures for learning communities.

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Sneller & Greeson Published in Penn Working Papers in Linguistics

Prof. Betsy Sneller (MSU) and PhD candidate Daniel Greeson (Stony Brook University)’s paper “Distinct Phonological Reanalysis Patterns in Michigan English TRAP” was recently published in Proceedings of the 48th Annual Penn Linguistics Conference. The article is available on UPenn’s repository.

Congratulations, Betsy and Daniel!

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Emily Duggan Successfully Defends M.A. Thesis

This July, Emily Duggan (MA Linguistics 2025) successfully defended her thesis “Lesbian vs. Dyke: An examination of the differences in social meaning between two queer identity terms”. Emily was advised by Prof. Suzanne Wagner, and her committee included Suzanne, Betsy Sneller, and Karthik Durvasula.

The thesis is currently available on ProQuest and will later become available on the MSU Library’s thesis archive.

Congratulations, Emily!

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Socio Lab students present at UURAF

Undergraduate members of the Sociolinguistics Lab and/or the MI Diaries project team demonstrated their research skills at MSU’s 2025 University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (UURAF) on April 11, 2025. Presenters included:

  • Sabrina Ruiz, Who’s afraid of the Big Bad C*nt? Changes in offensiveness across generations.
    • Senior thesis project supervised by Dr. Betsy Sneller.
  • Sara Kirkman, Emoji and age: Exploring age-based variations in expressing emotions via emojis
    • Senior thesis project supervised by Dr. Betsy Sneller.
  • Xhanna Travina, A/B testing for engaging users with Knowledge Commons newsletter emails
    • Mentor: Larissa Babak (College of Arts and Letters)
  • Hannah Choi, Interpreting the simple past as the present perfect (with Jaina Kittle, Kay Humpert, Mason Dellot)
  • Ezekiel Brown, Verb agreement with non-DP subjects

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