I am the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project Walk and Talk. I am also an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin and Associate Director of the Indigenous Languages Initiative at the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (UT Austin). My research investigates how language reflects and shapes human experience within biophysical environments and sociocultural contexts. I engage in long-term documentation of endangered languages of the Upper Rio Negro region in Brazilian Amazonia, working specifically with Dâw and Nadëb communities (Naduhup). My work examines typological patterns and their historical and cultural underpinnings, focusing on two core themes: the linguistic encoding of space, place, and landscape, and the development of family-internal typological diversity. Integrating linguistic typology, sociocultural linguistics, historical linguistics, and linguistic anthropology, I approach language as a cultural resource and speech as a cultural practice.

My research combines theoretical inquiry with extensive fieldwork, employing documentary methods such as audiovisual recording, semantic elicitation, and geospatial data collection in collaboration with Indigenous communities. These studies reveal how spatial language interacts with cultural knowledge, mobility, and environmental features, offering insights into the lived realities of hunter-gatherer societies. I also investigate typological divergence in Nadëb to reconstruct historical contact networks and multilingual dynamics in pre-colonial and colonial Amazonia. Through interdisciplinary collaborations—including my ERC project and Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship—I advance comparative typologies of spatial language and contribute to language documentation efforts that support Indigenous rights and cultural continuity.