The lab is moving again!! (by my count, this would be #8?). But this time, it's going to be one for the memoirs: We're moving overseas, to the University of Grenoble, near the Alps mountains in France! The lab director has accepted a professor position there and will move the lab to the Université Grenoble-Alpes, into the LIDILEM research group. The physical lab at Indiana University will wrap up in May, and merge with the Language Commons at IU. But the community of researchers will remain and expand - the research will continue. Things will regroup "formally" at UGA in September. In the meantime, I will post updates and news here. Stay tuned! 

Congratulations to lab members Keiji Iwamoto and Bihua Chen for their success in defending their doctoral dissertation! They have both done an outstanding job and their committees were impressed - way to go !! We are all very proud of you. Next, Bihua will start a job as Assistant Professor at Indiana University this summer, and Keiji will continue at the University of Florida. 

Bihua Chen (2026) Perceptual reconstruction of reduced speech in non-native listening. Department of Second Language Studies & Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University. Defense Date: April 17, 2026. 
Keiji Iwamoto (2026). The perceptual weighting of ‘redundant’ acoustic cues by second language learners and their role for phonological learning. Department of Second Language Studies, Indiana University. Defense Date: April 3, 2026.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Fall 2025 semester! Our lab meetings will be resuming - and the first one is TONIGHT at 4:30 pm in Ballantine as usual (in the lab). 
We'll be discussing the lab's various projects for the coming academic year, celebrating summer progress and outlining goals for the Fall. Make sure to bring any other topic that's relevant for you. Bring your planners, we'll aim to get a schedule going! 
See you there...

 Congratulations to Dr. Stacey Hanson on a wonderful hybrid defense! Great work and warm wishes for your new job at University of Cincinnati Blue Ash starting.... next Monday! :) 

Here is a picture of the committee and Stacey after the results were announced, with committee members Elena and Isabelle remotely shown on top.

The lab is delighted to announce another PhD! Hunter Brakovec successfully passed his doctoral defense today! His dissertation is entitled Third Language Transfer and Development, and is available from his website [LINK]. Check it out! Congratulations Hunter!!  Click here for the official announcement and abstract.

On Friday, March 28th, Brian Rocca defended his doctoral dissertation entitled "The effects of lexical characteristics, phonetic categorization, and vocabulary size on language learners' phonolexical representations: A lexical friction account"
The defense itself and the Q&A / discussion in the audience were a rousing success!  Congratulations on a job really well done, Brian! And good luck in your new lab at Northwestern!