Jean E. Fox Tree

Jean E. Fox Tree is a Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on spontaneous communication across diverse settings and media, emphasizing non-conventional signals like discourse markers, fillers, gestures, and prosody.

• Education: Ph.D. from Stanford University, M.Sc. from University of Edinburgh, A.B. from Harvard University

Her work demonstrates that spontaneous communication phenomena—such as repetitions, repairs, backchannels, and prosodic patterns—are critical to everyday conversational success. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses including Psychology of Language, Grant Writing for Psychologists, and advanced research seminars.