I am associate professor of historical linguistics in the Department of Language and Information Sciences at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, where I have been working since 2020. From 2018 until 2020, I worked as the Diebold Research Assistant in Comparative Philology at the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, and as an Instructor in Ancient Greek and Latin at the Faculty of Classics of the University of Oxford. There, I was associated with Wolfson College as a Junior Research Fellow, and with Balliol College, where I was a Lecturer in Latin and Greek language.

I hold an undergraduate degree in Classics and Oriental Studies, and an M.Phil. in General Linguistics and Comparative Philology from Oxford, where I have also completed my doctoral research.

In my doctoral dissertation, I investigated the historic relationship between Classical Armenian and Western Middle Iranian, specifically regarding questions of language contact resulting in pattern replication (“borrowed syntax”). An extended version was published as a monograph by Oxford University Press in 2023. I am further interested in relative clause syntax, esp. ‘relative attraction’ and headless relative clauses, as well as morphosyntactic alignment change.

Interests

My general interests include: Iranian comparative and historical linguistics (Avestan, Old Persian, Middle Persian and Parthian), Armenian historical linguistics, Greek and Latin historical linguistics, Indo-European comparative philology, language contact, relative clause syntax, the history of linguistic thought, and historical linguistic mehtodology.

I have a working knowledge of these languages: Latin, Classical Greek, Classical Armenian, Sanskrit, Old Persian, Avestan, Middle Persian, Parthian, Urartian, and Hurrian; Modern: German, French, Spanish, Turkish, Eastern Armenian, Welsh; and Italian, Dutch, and Russian (basic reading).

Scholarly Engagement

Between 2016 and 2019, I was Secretary for Student Associates of the Philological Society, and between 2019 and 2023 I served as a regular member of Council of the Society; I am now Director of Communications and Infrastructure. Between 2018 and 2020, I served as the secretary and interim president of the Oxford Research Staff Society (OxRSS). Since January 2021, I have also worked at the Journal of Indo-European Studies, first as an associate editor and since 2026 as co-editor. I am a member of the editorial board of the Language Science Press series Advances in Historical Linguistics, and since 2025 of the Publications of the Philological Society. Since 2022, I’m an elected member of the Steering committee of the Association Internationale des Études Arméniennes. Since 2023, I am the director of the Centre de linguistique et des sciences du langage at the University of Lausanne. For the period 2025–26, I serve as the head of our department.

I am also a Chartered Linguist, specialising in Language Education, and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.