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Curriculum Vitae

Education

2006 - 2011: Ph.D. Linguistics
University of Michigan
Dissertation title: The Role of Socioindexical Expectation in Speech Perception
Steven P. Abney & Patrice Speeter Beddor, co-chairs
Julie Boland, Robin Queen, & Benjamin Munson, readers
1996: B.A. Linguistics
University of Michigan
2007: Summer Institute of the Linguistic Society of America
Stanford University
2006: JHU Summer School on Human Language Technology
Johns Hopkins University

Employment

2021 -: Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Kentucky
2015 - 2021: Assistant Professor, Program in Linguistics, Department of English, University of Kentucky
2013 - 2015: Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
Meghan Sumner (PI)
2011 - 2013: Lecturer, Department of Linguistics, Rice University

Professional Experience

2019: Invited Faculty, “Speech Perception”, Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, University of California, Davis
2017: Invited Faculty, “Doing phonetics research” and “Eye tracking for linguistics research” Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, University of Kentucky
2013: Invited Faculty, “Introduction to Praat” Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute, University of Michigan
2007 - 2010: Journal Assistant & Student Board Member, Language Learning Journal, Blackwell Publishing
2009 - 2010: Research Assistant, Professor Pam Beddor, Michigan Phonetics & Phonology Laboratory
2007 - 2008: Research Assistant, Professors Pam Beddor & A. Coetzee, Michigan Phonetics & Phonology Laboratory
1997 - 2007: Programmer &, System administrator, Manager of Web and Database production services, University of Michigan

Publications & Presentations

Publications ( bibtex )

(in press): McGowan, K.B. Speech Perception. In Sociophonetics: Implications for Phonetics and Phonology, ed. by Lauren Hall-Lew and Jennifer Nycz. Oxford University Press
(2025): Laycock, K., & McGowan, K. B. (2025). Removing the Disguise: The Matched Guise Technique, Incongruity, and Listener Awareness. Journal of Sociolinguistics https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12700
(2025): Babel, A. M., Campbell‐Kibler, K., & McGowan, K. B. Introduction to the Thematic Issue. Journal of Sociolinguistics https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12690
(2022): Barrett, R., Cramer, J., & McGowan, K. B. English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003332886
(2021): Babel, A.M., McGowan, K.B., & Enríquez Duque, P. Niveles de percepción de las vocales en contacto: el caso de una variedad de español andino en Bolivia. Niveles de percepción de las vocales en contacto: el caso de una variedad de español andino en Bolivia, 119-136.
(2020): Baese-Berk, M.M., McLaughlin, D., and McGowan, K.B. Perception of non-native speech. Language and Linguistics Compass
(2020): Medeiros, D.J., Mains, P., and McGowan, K.B. Ceiling Effects on Weight in Heavy NP Shift.Linguistic Inquiry
(2020): McGowan, K.B. & Babel, A.M. Perceiving isn’t believing: Divergence in levels of sociolinguistic awareness Language in Society 49(1)
(2019): McGowan, K.B., Johnson, M.T., Combs, A., and Soleymanpoor, M. Acoustic, non-invasive measurement of velopharyngeal aperture using a high frequency tone, Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Sydney, Australia
2018: Beddor, P.S., Coetzee, A., Styler, W., McGowan, K.B., & Boland, J.E. The time course of individuals’ perception and production of coarticulatory information, and its implications for sound change Language 94(4) 931–968
2016: McGowan, K.B. “Sounding Chinese and Listening Chinese: Awareness and Knowledge in the Laboratory” In Awareness and Control in Sociolinguistics Research, ed. by A.M. Babel. Cambridge University Press.
2015: McGowan, K.B. “Social Expectation Improves Speech Perception in Noise” Language and Speech. doi:10.1177/0023830914565191
2014: Sumner, M., Kim, S. K., King, E., and McGowan, K.B. “The socially-weighted encoding of spoken words: A dual-route approach to speech perception” Frontiers in Psychology. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.01015
2013: P.S. Beddor, K.B. McGowan, J.E. Boland, A.W. Coetzee and A. Brasher “The Perceptual Time Course of Coarticulation” — Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 133 (2013) : 2350-2366. doi:10.1121/1.3249491
2012: McGowan, K.B. “Gradient Lexical Reflexes of the Syllable Contact Law” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society 45, Volume I, R. Bochnak, N. Nicola, P. Klecha, J. Urban, A. Lemieux and C. Weaver (Eds.), p. 445-454. Chicago Linguistics Society: Chicago.

Invited Talks & Colloquia

2019: University of Tennessee, Knoxville — Social expectation and speech perception: mismatch and alignment
2016: University of Michigan — “Subcategorical mismatches can be mismatches of phonetic, phonological, lexical, and social context”
2016: North Carolina State University — “Socially informed speech perception: context, congruency, and complications”
2016: University at Buffalo, The State University of New York — “Social knowledge and speech perception: mismatch and alignment”
2014: UC Berkeley, Phorum — “Perceiving isn't believing: listeners' expectation and awareness of phonetically-cued social information” with A.M. Babel
2012: Rice University — “Claims about processing require online tasks: disjunction of AXB and interview results in a Bolivian crossroads”
2012: University of Texas, Austin — “Social expectation and theories of speech perception” — Invited colloquium
2011: Rice University — “The role of socioindexical expectation in speech perception.”
2010: University of Michigan — “The perceptual time course of coarticulation” with P.S. Beddor
2009: University of Michigan — “Aerodynamic Modeling of Coarticulation Improves Concatenative Synthesis”

Presentations

2015: McGowan, K.B. and Sumner, M. A phonetic explanation of pronunciation variant effects. 89^th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
2015: Sumner, M., McGowan, K.B., D'Onofrio, A., and Pratt, T. The contribution of form and meaning to the processing of careful and casual speech. 89^th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
2015: Mains, P., McGowan, K.B., and Medeiros, D. Gradient acceptability by length in heavy NP shift. 89^th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
2015: Moores, N.P., McGowan, K.B., Sumner, M. and Frank, MC. Children use phonetically-cued talker information to infer speaker meaning. Poster, 89^th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
2014: Moores, N.P., McGowan, K.B., Sumner, M., and Frank, M.C. Children use phonetically-cued talker information to disambiguate similar objects. The 55^th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomics Society, Long Beach, CA
2014: McGowan, K.B. Sumner, M., D'Onofrio, A., and Pratt, T. The contribution of form and meaning to the processing of careful and casual speech. 27^th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. Columbus, OH
2014: Sumner, M., Calder, J., D'Onofrio, A., McGowan, K.B., and Pratt, T. Top-down vs. bottom-up processing depends on the acoustic composition of an utterance. 88^th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
2013: Sumner, M.; D'Onofrio, A.; McGowan, K.; Pratt, T.; and Calder, J. Differences in the recognition of careful and casual speech. Poster, 166^th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America
2013: McGowan, K.B. and Babel, A.M. Perception of Spanish in Contact: Bolivian listeners' expectation and awareness of socioindexical variation. Workshop on Sound Change Actuation, University of Chicago
2013: McGowan, K.B. Sounding Chinese and Listening Chinese: Imitation, Perception, and Awareness of Non-Native Phonology. Part of panel, Awareness \& control in sociolinguistic research. 87^th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
2012: Babel, A.M. and McGowan, K.B. Social Categorization and Levels of Awareness: A Cross-Disciplinary Study. Part of panel, Voices in Movement: Phonetic Border Crossings. American Anthropological Association annual meeting.
2012: McGowan, K.B. The influence of socioindexical expectations on speech perception in noise. 86^th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
2011: McGowan, K.B. The influence of socioindexical expectations on speech perception in noise. Poster, 162^nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America
2011: McGowan, K.B. and Medeiros, D. J. Tongues don't twist —mental representations do. 85^th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
2011: McGowan, K.B. Are you experienced? Socio-indexical knowledge and naive listeners. Poster, 85^th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
2010: McGowan, K.B. Examining Listeners' Use of Sociolinguistic Information During Early Phonetic Judgments: Evidence from eye-tracking. New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV 39)
2010: McGowan, K.B. Listener Expectations and the Processing of Foreign-Accented Speech. Mid-Continental Workshop on Phonology (MCWOP 16)
2010: Beddor, P.S., McGowan, K.B., Boland, J., and Coetzee, A. The Perceptual Time Course of Coarticulation. Poster, Laboratory Phonology (LabPhon 12)
2010: McGowan, K.B. Aerodynamic Modeling of Coarticulation for Unit Selection Synthesis. Poster, 84^th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
2009: Beddor, P.S., McGowan, K.B., Boland, J., and Coetzee, A. The Perceptual Time Course of Coarticulatory Nasalization. Poster, 158^th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America
2009: McGowan, K.B. Aerodynamic Modeling for Concatenative Speech Synthesis. Poster, 158^th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America
2008: McGowan, K.B. Pointwise Mutual Information and the Syllable Contact Law. Mid-Continental Workshop on Phonology (MCWOP 14)
2008: Coetzee, A. and McGowan, K.B. Allophonic cues to syllabification. CUNY Conference On The Syllable
1994: Bailey, R.W. and Kevin B. McGowan The Michigan Academy — “English in Michigan: A Century of Scholarship” with Richard W. Bailey

Teaching

Phonetics: Linguistics 500

Fall 2015—2017
Computational Linguistics: Linguistics 511

Fall 2017
Language in U.S. Society: Linguistics 331

Spring 2016—2017
Phonology: Linguistics 515

Spring 2017
Introduction to R: Arts & Sciences 500

Spring 2016—2017
Sociophonetics: Linguistics 617

Spring 2016
Introduction to Linguistics: Linguistics 221

Fall 2015—2016
Doing Phonetics Research: with Melissa Baese-Berk, Melinda Fricke, & Natasha Warner
LSA Linguistic Institute
Summer 2017, Lexington, KY
Eyetracking for linguistic research: LSA Institute
Summer 2017, Lexington, KY
Praat Scripting: LSA Annual Meeting Pre-Workshops
January 2015, Portland, OR; LSA Institute
Summer 2013, Ann Arbor, MI
Computational Linguistics: Linguistics 409
Rice University, Department of Linguistics
Spring 2013
Introduction to Phonology: Linguistics 311/511 & Anthropology 323/523
Rice University, Department of Linguistics
Spring 2012 & Spring 2013
Advanced Phonology: Linguistics 427
Rice University, Department of Linguistics
Fall 2012
Hearing & Speech Perception, Graduate Seminar: Linguistics 555
Rice University, Department of Linguistics
Spring 2012
Introduction to the Scientific Study of Language: Linguistics/Anthropology 200
Rice University, Department of Linguistics
Fall 2011
Introduction to Phonetics: Linguistics/Anthropology 301/501
Rice University, Department of Linguistics
Fall 2011 & 2012
Language & the Human Mind: Linguistics 209/Pyschology 242
Graduate Student Instructor for Professor Sam Epstein
University of Michigan, Department of Linguistics
Fall 2009
College Writing: English 125
University of Michigan, Department of English Language & Literature
Fall 2008
Introduction to Language: Linguistics 111
University of Michigan, Department of Linguistics
Spring 2008
Javascript Programming: Introductory JavaScript Programming Workshop
University of Michigan, School of Information
Winter 2006, Winter 2007
UNIX, perl programming, SQL, and various computing skills workshops: University of Michigan, Information Technology Division
1997 - 1999

Fellowships and Awards

March 2016: Confucius Institute Faculty China Curriculum Development Grant
2010 - 2011: Horace H. Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, University of Michigan
2010: Humanities Candidacy Fellowship, University of Michigan
2008: National Science Foundation, Honorable Mention, Graduate Research Fellowship
2008: Pre-Candidate Research Grant, Rackham Graduate Student Research Grant, Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan
2007: Linguistic Society of America, LSA Linguistic Institute Fellowship, LSA Summer Institute, Stanford University
2006: NAACL Summer School, North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics
2005 - 2006: Non-Traditional Fellowship, Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan

Student Research Supervision

Penelope Howe: Investigation of cues to fricative voicing in dialects of Malagasy. Rice University. Qualifying Paper in progress, chair
Hussein Hizazi: Formant Analysis of Jordanian Arabic Vowels: Emphasis Effect on F2 in Jordanian Arabic. Rice University. Qualifying Paper in progress, chair
John Galindo: A psychoacoustic study of the influence of L1 lexical tone and pitch perception. Rice University. Qualifying Paper in progress, chair
Ling Ma: Native Mandarin perception of English word boundary consonant overlap. Qualifying Paper in progress, chair
Ru-ping Ruby Tso: Chinese Characters and Speech Recognition. Rice University. Qualifying Paper in progress, reader
Obi Nwabueze: The use of eye-tracking in speech perception research. Undergraduate Research
Sheri-Ann Peckham: Investigation of age-related perceptual plasticity using Jamaican Creole. Undergraduate Research

Service

2014 -: Peer Review, Lingua
2014 -: Association for Laboratory Phonology, Web Committee & @LabPhon Twitter maintainer
2012,2014: Conference abstract review, Speech Science and Technology 2012, Sydney, Australia
2012 -: Peer Review, Journal of Language & Speech
2011 -: Peer Review, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
2009: Conference abstract review, Michigan Linguistics Society
2007: Conference abstract review, Experimental Approaches to Optimality Theory (ExpOT)

Departmental Service & Participation

2011 - 2013

Organizer, Statistics for Linguistics Reading Group, Rice University

2011 - 2013

Faculty Associate, Hanszen College, Rice University

2010 - 2011

Linguistics Executive Committee, University of Michigan

2007 - 2009

Co-chair of Michigan Linguistics Colloquium Committee

2006 - 2011

Active partipant and presenter at:

Phonetics/Phonology Discussion Group (Phondi)
Computational Linguistics Lab Group
Psycholinguistics Lab Group

Selected Software Projects

CoSign, Open Source Web Single SignOn ( co-founder, former developer ).
ChomskyBot, Pseudo-random Sentence Generator and Gentle Mockery Engine.
ldapweb, Web-based LDAP Directory Client.
kpasswd.cgi, Web-based Kerberos password changer

Technologies

Eyelink II head-mounted eye tracker,EG2-PCX Electroglottograph, EVA 2 pneumotachograph, Zonare Ultrasound, Praat, Wavesurfer, OpenSesame, sox, etc.
Python, Perl, C, Bourne shell, JavaScript, awk, tcl, SQL, PL/SQL
RDBMS systems (Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL), UNIX administration & programming (Linux, OpenBSD, MacOS, Solaris, etc.), HTML, XML, CSS, LaTeX

Professional affiliations

2010 -: Association for Laboratory Phonology
2009 -: Acoustical Society of America
2006 -: Linguistic Society of America