Rebecca Lurie Starr

Rebecca Lurie Starr

Fellow

Rebecca Lurie Starr is an Associate Professor in the English Language and Linguistics program in the Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies at NUS. Since 2020, she has been the head of the Language and Linguistics Research Cluster and a steering committee member of the Gender and Sexuality Research Cluster in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She also serves as the coordinator of the Masters by Coursework program in English Language and Linguistics.

A/P Starr received her PhD from Stanford in Linguistics with a designation in Cognitive Science. Her research focuses on language variation and change, the acquisition of variation in multilingual and dialectally-diverse contexts, and the sociophonetic construction of style. She is the co-editor-in-chief of Linguistics Vanguard and serves on the editorial boards of Journal of English Linguistics and Gender and Language, among others. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in topics including introductory linguistics, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and phonetics.

As a linguist at NUS, I am in the privileged position of teaching and learning from students who have a boundless enthusiasm for language and the linguistic patterns they see around them. Linguistics is an interdisciplinary field that encompasses a wide range of methodologies and ways of thinking about the world; introducing students to this variety of methods and analytical tools is one of the major benefits (and challenges) of linguistics teaching. I am interested in finding new ways to engage students with academic research and to help them make connections between research and real-world issues. 

Teaching Awards 

  • Annual Teaching Excellence Awards: 2020/21, 2021/22.
  • Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Teaching Excellence Awards: 2018/19, 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22.