"My favorite thing about linguistics is that the use of language is an incredibly complicated thing, but it is as common as it is complex. Basically everyone uses language without knowing much detail about how it works, yet it influences how people experience the world in a very fundamental way."

Originally from Dallas, Texas, Luca Cavasso studied Spanish, French, and Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin before joining the MA program in Linguistics at SFU in 2016. Luca came to the field early; while studying Spanish in elementary school, Luca became fascinated by how some aspects of Spanish differed from English, spurring an interest in linguistics that cemented during their first day in an introductory linguistics class in university. Luca's interests include language and identity, textual coherence and evaluation, and how people learn the differences between sounds in a language that is not their first. Luca's research will focus on the cognitive processes that we unconsciously use when adapting our understanding of sound to another language, and may contribute to improving language teaching methods.

Luca is an avid gamer; the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series will always hold a special place in their heart, and they are currently playing XCOM2, Stellaris, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and The Witcher 3. A proponent of the Oxford comma, Luca is annoyed that it is not to be used in Spanish or French.