Nicole Kruspe is a specialist in the Aslian (Austroasiatic) languages of the Malay Peninsula. She received her PhD in linguistics at The University of Melbourne in 2000 for A Grammar of Semelai, and has since undertaken documentation of the previously undescribed Mah Meri, Ceq Wong, Semaq Beri and Batek languages. Among her interests are fieldwork methodology, language documentation, grammar writing, structural and semantic typology, language contact and the prehistory of the Austroasiatic languages.

In her current project, Singing spiders, sobbing stones (funded by VR), she is investigating the linguistic representation of sound in Aslian languages. Her previous research was on Perceptual modalities across languages and cultures in the Malay Peninsula, focussing on olfaction and vision, and funded by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

She is the co-founder and Curator of RWAAI (The Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage) at Lund University, an initiative funded by a Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Infrastructure Grant.