Jennifer Bohun Hay is a New Zealand linguist who specialises in sociolinguistics, laboratory phonology, and the history of New Zealand English. As of 2020 she is a full professor at the

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury (UC; ; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was founded in 1873 as Canterbur ...

Academic career

In 2000, Hay gained a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

titled ''Causes and Consequences of Word Structure'' at

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

in the Linguistics department. She moved to the

, and was appointed a full professor in 2010. Hay's research has revealed that a New Zealand dialect took only a single generation to emerge. She has explored how speech perception and production is influenced by past experiences and current context, including environmental factors: for example, New Zealanders hear vowels differently if they are in a room with toy

kangaroo Kangaroos are marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use, the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern gre ...

s and

koala The koala (''Phascolarctos cinereus''), sometimes inaccurately called the koala bear, is an arboreal herbivorous marsupial native to Australia. It is the only Extant taxon, extant representative of the Family (biology), family ''Phascolar ...

s as opposed to toy

kiwi Kiwi most commonly refers to: * Kiwi (bird), a flightless bird native to New Zealand * Kiwi (nickname), an informal name for New Zealanders * Kiwifruit, an edible hairy fruit with many seeds * Kiwi dollar or New Zealand dollar, a unit of curren ...

. Hay is the director of the New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour, a multi-disciplinary research centre based at the University of Canterbury. In 2015 she was awarded a James Cook Research Fellowship to research on how personal experience shapes the New Zealand accent and word use. In 2017, Hay was featured in the Royal Society Te Apārangi's

150 women in 150 words The "150 women in 150 words" project was undertaken by the Royal Society Te Apārangi and published during their 150th anniversary celebrations in 2017. The aim of the project was "celebrating women's contributions to expanding knowledge in New Z ...

project, celebrating the contributions of women to knowledge in New Zealand.

Awards

Hay received a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship in 2011, a James Cook Research Fellowship and a University of Canterbury Research Award in 2015, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2015.

Selected articles

* * * * * * *

Authored books

* * * Rens Bod, Jennifer Hay, and Stefanie Jannedy. ''Probabilistic Linguistics.'' 2003. MIT Press.

References

External links

* * Living people New Zealand women academics Women linguists Year of birth missing (living people) Northwestern University alumni Academic staff of the University of Canterbury Fellows of the Royal Society of New Zealand Victoria University of Wellington alumni James Cook Research Fellows {{NewZealand-academic-bio-stub