I'm interested in how a seemingly stable format for communication (language structures) are co-constructed in the process of organizing face-to-face human interactions. I use conversation analysis to show how that works. 

From 2000 to 2018 I investigated how mundane social actions in classrooms are sites for academic language socialization, language learning, and the construction of immigrant-learner identity. These studies included how teenagers were socialized into the disciplines of social studies and science in a public high school how learning happens in classrooms without explicit instruction, and how adults with little or no previous education learn language in a community college setting.

From 2018 until now (late 2024) I have been involved in research on the sequential structure of talk-in-interaction during augmented reality game playing, sociomaterialist conceptions of language, the organization of human-AI interaction, linguistic landscapes, and language diversity and discrimination at Portland State.