He earned his PhD in Linguistics from Stanford University in 2006 and was an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University until 2011. His research examines the social significance of phonetic variation and how such variation participates in the construction of identity, particularly gender and sexuality. He directs the Interactional Sociophonetics Laboratory, where he studies the roles of affect and embodiment in sociophonetics. He also has a strong interest in the dialects of California, with an emphasis on inland varieties. He has coedited the books Research Methods in Linguistics (with Devyani Sharma), Language and Sexuality (with Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Sarah Roberts, and Andrew Wong), and a special issue of American Speech on sociophonetics and sexuality (with Penelope Eckert).His website is http://web.stanford.edu/~podesva/.