Kelsey Sasaki

Dr Kelsey Sasaki is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics at the University of Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College. She holds a PhD in Linguistics from UC Santa Cruz (2021) and a BA in Linguistics from New York University (2014). Her research focuses on pragmatics, psycholinguistics, and semantics, with particular attention to narrative discourse processing and linguistic fieldwork in indigenous languages like Santiago Laxopa Zapotec and Hawai’i Creole.

Education:

• B.A. in Linguistics, New York University (2014)
• PhD in Linguistics, University of California, Santa Cruz (2021)

Research interests include subconscious mental processes in narrative comprehension, experimental methods in semantics/pragmatics, and syntactic variation in endangered languages. Her fieldwork collaborations involve speakers of Santiago Laxopa Zapotec on projects like relative clause comprehension and language education initiatives.

Her Leverhulme Fellowship supports research on discourse coherence mechanisms, combining formal pragmatics with psycholinguistic experiments. She teaches undergraduate courses in pragmatics and psycholinguistics at Jesus College, and her work bridges theoretical linguistics with applied fieldwork.

Labs/Teams: Collaborates with UC Santa Cruz linguists and indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico, on Zapotec language projects. Maintains active involvement in endangered language documentation and revitalization efforts.