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 Associate in Comparative Philology at the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, and as a Lecturer 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 its 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 been working 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 have been an elected member of the Steering committee of the Association Internationale des Études Arméniennes. Since 2023, I have been serving as the director of the Centre de linguistique et des sciences du langage at the University of Lausanne. For the period 2025–26, I also 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.