Hi! My name is Jiayi Zhou (周佳旖). I’m from Shaoxing, China, a place famous for its wine, novelists, activists, rivers, and bridges. I grew up surrounded by stories, spoken aloud, written in books, or just soaked in wine. I’ve especially benefited from linguistic stories in Hangzhou (2017–2021), Osaka (2019), and Utrecht (2022–2024), and I’m eager to explore more in syntax and semantics. I’m also very curious about language evolution, multimodal linguistics, and anthropological linguistics. It’s often more about the specific topic and the people involved in the project, rather than the subfield itself.

I’m very excited to start new stories and learn more about linguistics as a PhD student at UConn, in Storrs. My ambition at this stage is to become a better thinker, though this often leaves me feeling anxious about finding my place in the “wild” life, outside academia. Is a better thinker always a better person? I’m aiming toward the way of becoming a better person though. It’s a great pleasure to have linguistics as my lens—whether a pair of glasses, a window, or a prism. Still, I sometimes struggle with having too much linguistics (or some scientific mindset) in my daily life. Anyway, thank you for reading these naive thoughts! I will probably change my metaphor and weave my stories as time goes on!

Hi, I’m Heesun Yang. I am from Seoul, Korea. I received my BA in English Literature & Linguistics, and MA in English Linguistics at Dongguk University. My interest in linguistics began during my undergraduate studies when I first encountered tree structures. I was fascinated by how sentences could be analyzed this way, and this has driven me to pursue linguistics ever since. Currently, I am primarily interested in Syntax and its interface with Semantics.

Besides my academics, I enjoy cooking, shopping, and spending time with family and friends. I get especially energetic when the weather is nice and I love taking a walk on beautiful days.

I am excited to be a graduate student at UConn and looking forward to my time here!

My name is Hiroaki Teraoka and I am from Japan. I did my BA and MA both in Kyoto University. Although my BA program was English literature, I was not so interested in literature (and as a result, I repeated a year). Rather, I was fascinated by the grammar of the English language and how it had changed over the time. Thus, I started studying linguistics.

I am now interested in syntax. More precisely, I study a framework called “labeling algorithm”.

Since I came to UCONN, I started enjoying working out in the gym (there is a gym in the Storrs campus). Other than working out in the gym, I enjoy reading Noam Chomsky’s works on linguistics, of all of which I like Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory the best, since it is very long and full of interesting ideas which can still be used today. My second favorite book by Chomsky is Lectures on Government and Binding, for more or less the same reasons. Apart from these, I enjoy a Japanese smartphone game called Fate Grand Order, on which I spend a reasonable amount of money and people around me sometimes tell me off for this habit of mine.

Hello, I’m Lydia Palaiologou. I’m from Athens, Greece. I got my BA in Art Theory and History from the Athens School of Fine Arts, my first MA in Art Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and my second MA in Linguistics also at the University of Amsterdam. My first MA thesis was on Wittgensteinian grammar and color terms across the world’s languages. Although I always had a strong interest in linguistics, this thesis was what made me decide to actually study it. I am now very excited to be studying it at UConn, surrounded by so many smart and interesting people.

My main research interests are language acquisition and development and sign languages (including established sign languages, rural sign languages, and homesign). Other interests of mine include language processing, gesture processing, and syntax. I am also currently cultivating an interest in formal semantics.

Besides studying, I love listening to music, watching movies (mostly old ones), reading, kickboxing, and watching Youtube videos on prehistoric animals.

Hi! I am Yao Lin (林曜) from Wenzhou, China. Here is an interesting fact. Growing up, I had numerous experiences where my given name 曜 (yào) was mispronounced as 濯 (zhuó), 翟 (zhái) or 瞿 (qú) due to their orthographic similarities.

My passion for linguistics started with an interest in cross-dialectal variation (particularly between Mandarin and Wu). Currently, my research interests lie in syntax and its interfaces with semantics and morphology. Before coming to UConn, I did my BA at Beijing Forestry University and my MA at Peking University.

Outside of linguistics, I enjoy doing photography, exploring nature, and trying different foods.