Hello!

I am an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, Illinois. I received my Ph.D. in 1996 from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My area of specialization is linguistic and cognitive anthropology. My primary geographic focus is Oceania, in particular, Western Polynesia, the Kingdom of Tonga, where I conducted extensive fieldwork. My research and interests are interdisciplinary; I bring together linguistic, psychological, and anthropological perspectives to cognitive science. My doctoral research focused on the linguistic, cognitive, and cultural representations of spatial relationships; my current research focuses on cultural models that I define as 'the language of culture.' My specific interest is the investigation of intra-modular and inter-modular conceptual structures. I taught at UCLA, University of Missouri, Columbia, and College of Charleston, South Carolina. I currently teach courses in linguistic anthropology, cognitive anthropology, and cognitive science.