I received my PhD in Linguistics from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, in 1997. I am currently a professor at the Linguistics Department at the University of Florida (UF), where I co-direct the Brain, Language and Bilingualism lab (with Eleonora Rossi). I was among the first investigators exploring the use of event-related brain potentials to study syntactic aspects of sentence processing. After I started at UF, I gradually became interested in how language users flexibly adjust their processing to the language context.  My current research interests include predictive processing, code-switching, and naturalistic processing. I use a variety of techniques (self-paced reading, judgments, priming, eye-tracking, EEG, modeling) in various populations (late second-language learners, early bilinguals, functional monolinguals) to answer my research questions. My research has been supported by NSF, NIH and NWO.

Fun fact: I started out as a syntactician. My MA thesis “A Minimalist Approach to Extraposition” is available here.