She received her Ph.D. in Linguistic Anthropology from the University of Virginia in 2005, and held a pre-doctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (2003-2005). Her publications include the monograph A Grammar of Hup (Mouton Grammar Library 43), as well as papers in Diachronica, International Journal of American Linguistics, Linguistic Typology, and Studies in Language. Her research interests involve descriptive and documentary work on indigenous Amazonian languages, typology, language contact and language change, and the implications of the latter for understanding Amazonian prehistory.