I am a linguist and I work at Trinity College Dublin as an Assistant Professor in Linguistics (tenured).

My interests are syntactic variation, Romance microvariation,  syntax-pragmatics interface, syntactic change, and fieldwork methodologies.  I am particularly interested in the microvariation found in the languages spoken in Italy and its significance for the study of the intersection between syntax and pragmatics; so much of my work focuses on nominal and clausal left-peripheral discourse phenomena such as complementation, presentative particles, and discourse deixis.

Recently, I have focused on the pragmatico-syntactic contribution of gestures in the languages spoken in southern Italy. Gestural Grammar: Investigating Gesture in Southern Italy (GestuGram; PI: Colasanti) received funding from the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute (2020-23), the Higher Education Authority of Ireland (2021-23), and the Provost’s Office of Trinity College Dublin (Provost’s PhD Project Award; 2021-25).