I am from Cape Town, South Africa, where multilingualism is woven into the everyday tapestry of life. I grew up speaking English and Afrikaans and learned German as an additional language in high school. 

After graduating from high school, I spent several years employed in the airline industry, where I experienced firsthand the social access multilingualism afforded me. This experience ultimately informed my decision to return to university and pursue degrees focused on the intersection of language and society. 

Today, I am particularly interested in how multilingual learners can leverage their existing linguistic knowledge as they acquire additional languages. I am motivated by the idea that language learning can do more than develop communicative competence: it can expand the social worlds that learners are able to access and participate in. 

My work therefore explores how we can recognize and harness the linguistic resources that learners already possess rather than treating their existing languages as separate from, or even obstacles to, additional language learning.