• Linguistic variation
• Language documentation
• Language acquisition in language contact
• Migration history (formation and change of ethnic identities)

Since 10/2022 – Postdoctoral Researcher, Chair of German Linguistics, Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

10/2021 – 05/2025 – Senior Lecturer (German, Linguistics, and Migration History), Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, The University of Texas at San Antonio

04 – 09/2021 – Visiting Scholar, Department of History, Texas A&M University (Project: The History of Black German Speakers and Afro-German Relations in Texas)

03/2016 – 08/2019 – Research Associate, Leibniz Institute for the German Language, Mannheim (Project: German at Work – The Linguistic-Communicative Integration of Refugees)

09/2015 – 05/2016 – Research Associate, Texas German Dialect Project, Department of Germanic Studies, The University of Texas at Austin

09/2011 – 05/2016 – PhD, The University of Texas at Austin
Dissertation: The Roots of “Multiethnolects”: Effects of Migration on the Lexicon and Speech of German-speaking School Children.

10/2001 – 02/2008 – Magister (M.A.), University of Leipzig
Major: General Linguistics, Minors: Philosophy, Logic, and Philosophy of Science
Thesis: Grammatical Relations in Kalkha Mongolian

H. Bailey Carroll Award (2026) –  best article, Southwestern Historical Quarterly.

BayIntAn Funding, Bavarian Research Alliance (2024, 2025) – Initiation of international research collaborations (Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Wisconsin)

Fellow, KU Center for Advanced Studies “Dialogical Cultures” (2024) – Research project: German Speakers in the Ethnic Tapestry of the American Southwest.

DFG Conference Funding (2023) – German Abroad 5 – Extraterritorial Varieties of German Worldwide, Eichstätt & Munich. Applicant: Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kürschner; Supervision: Prof. Dr. Claudia Riehl

Teaching and Learning Reimagined Award, University of Texas at San Antonio (2022) – For the conception of the digital teaching project The Texas German Experience of San Antonio

DAAD Postdoctoral Short-Term Fellowship (2021) – Research project: The History of Black German Speakers and Afro-German Relations in Texas, Texas A&M University

Winter Semester 2025/2026

Seminar: Syntax of Contemporary German

Seminar (at the ZFM): Language, Culture, Religion: Identitities in Migration Society

Summer Semester 2025:

Basic Module 2: Contemporary German (seminar & tutorial)

Winter Semester 2024/2025

Seminar: Syntax of Contemporary German

Basic Module 1: German Linguistics (seminar & tutorial)

Summer Semester 2023

Basic Module 2: Contemporary German (seminar & tutorial)

Winter Semester 2022/2023

Seminar Syntax of Contemporary German