Speaker bio

Kristin Van Engen is a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Linguistics at Washington University in St. Louis. She teaches in the Linguistics program and runs the PsychLing Lab in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Van Engen’s area of research is human speech perception and processing, with a focus on the sensory and cognitive mechanisms that support successful communication in challenging listening conditions. She is guided by particular concerns for how linguistic experience shapes speech perception and processing and how signal-intrinsic (e.g., accent) and signal-extrinsic factors (e.g., noise) interact to modulate the success of communication. 

About the LinguisticsNOW colloquium series

The LinguisticsNOW series is presented jointly by SFU Linguistics and UBC Linguistics. This annual event showcases exciting new research in linguistics while fostering collaboration between UBC and SFU. 

• LinguisticsNOW 2025: Jessica Coon
• LinguisticsNOW 2024: Charles B. Chang
• LinguisticsNOW 2023: Jeremy Calder
• LinguisticsNOW 2022: Nicole Holliday
• LinguisticsNOW 2021: Maria Polinsky
• LinguisticsNOW 2019: Anne Christophe