My research focuses on tone, both lexical and grammatical; my interests in general include phonology, morphology, morphophonology and the description of understudied and undocumented languages. My research is driven primarily by fieldwork conducted on the Dinka language (Nilo-Saharan, South Sudan), whose complex and unusual suprasegmental system involves independently contrastive tone, vowel length, and voice quality. I work across and within different varieties of Dinka, studying their unusual tonal phenomena, how the tone systems are similar, how they differ, and how they may have evolved, as well as the many morphophonological and morphosyntactic phenomena that reveal themselves during the process.
I am also interested in innovative research methodologies, specifically those that promote: 1) decolonial practices with regard to the relationship between language communities and research communities, and 2) accessibility in all areas/stages of research, both for researchers and language communities (since those communities are unfortunately still often separate). Recently, I have begun to work on the interface of language and music—specifically, how the complex Dinka sound system maps onto its rich song tradition, given that Dinka speech makes use of many of the same types of elements as a song does, such as pitch and length. Lastly, I am interested in the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on field linguistics and resulting novel approaches to fieldwork that allow ethical practices in the face of ongoing global crisis and vaccine/healthcare inequity.
My pronouns are she/her.
How I pronounce my name: [mɪ.ˈɹɛ.lə blʌm]