I am Professor of General Linguistics at the Centre for Languages and Literature. I received my PhD from Hamburg University. I held post-doc positions at the University of Calgary, McGill, Lund and Hamburg. From 2014-2024 I worked as Professor of Romance Linguistics at Konstanz University; between 2015-2023 as Professor II at UiT, Tromsø.

My research is concerned with various dimensions of multilingualism, including phonology and morphosyntax in multilingual L1, L2 and L3 acquisition as well as bilectalism, language policy, reading. I am particularly interested in minority languages and links to diachronic change.

I have recently completed a project on ethnic policies at the Cluster of Excellence at Konstanz University and a project on the acquisition of rhetorical questions. I am editor of Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism and member of various editorial boards, e.g., Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Lingue e Linguaggio, Heritage Language Journal.