2. I’m an Associate Professor in Psychological Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where I direct the Cognition in Interaction Lab. 

    I study cognition in socially and environmentally situated contexts. I’m particularly interested in how perspective-taking unfolds in these contexts. Perspective-taking is ubiquitous in everyday life: in many situations we must consider perspectives distinct from our own, including others’ emotions, perceptions, knowledge, and beliefs. Yet this fundamental cognitive skill is complex and subject to many underexplored constraints. Much of my work focuses on examining constraints on how language users keep track of their conversational partners’ perspective, how they adapt their linguistic and non-linguistic behavior to coordinate with their partners, and how successful that coordination ultimately is. My overarching theoretical and empirical approach emphasizes the relation of language to its contexts of use, the bodies of interlocutors, and the space they occupy.


    I’m looking to recruit students applying to UNC Charlotte’s Health Psychology Ph.D. program or M.A. in Psychology program. I welcome emails from prospective students expressing interest in my lab, but your decision to email me will have no impact on your chances of receiving an interview invitation or an offer of admission. To keep things fair for all applicants, I generally don’t meet with prospective students outside of the admissions process (i.e., prior to interview invitations). However, I’m happy to answer questions not addressed by the websites of these graduate programs.

    When reviewing applications, I am most interested in the fit between your interests, experiences, and goals, and our lab’s mission, our research focus, and my own strengths as a mentor. Our lab is currently supported by a grant from NSF’s Perception, Action, and Cognition program to examine the patterns of multimodal interpersonal coordination that support successful collaboration. I’m therefore interested in recruiting students whose interests will align well with this work. For prospective students’ in the Health Psychology program, interests in perspective-taking or interpersonal communication could be situated in health care settings or be related to wellbeing and health outcomes (among other topics).


    ORCID 0000-0001-7593-6629