My research targets adult second language (L2) and bilingual acquisition and processing, and also gesture production and comprehension in acquisition, drawing on multiple methods ranging from speech and gesture analysis to behavioural and neurocognitive techniques. I hold a Wallenberg Scholar grant entitled Embodied billingualism dedicated to the study of these topics. I also lead the group Language Acquisition, Multilingualism, and Teaching (LAMINATE) w. J. Granfeldt. I am President of the International Society for Gesture Studies.

Previously, I headed the research group The Dynamics of Multilingual Processing (with P. Indefrey) at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, the Netherlands, where I also co-founded the Nijmegen Gesture Centre (with A. Özyurek), the first centre of its kind.