vision statement: a tranifesto
The UCSB Trans Research In Linguistics Lab (TRILL) promotes understandings of language, power, and identity through trans-centering research and community engagement. We are committed not only to trans analytic lenses, but also social and linguistic justice for gender non-normative communities, within and beyond academia. We understand ‘transness’ broadly, taking into account the ways gendered identities are produced by and in conversation with various forms of domination and resistance. Thus, we recognize gender as necessarily intersecting with other subjectivities and positionalities, among them race, ethnicity, and citizenship; disability and neurodiversity; linguistic and semiotic repertoires and communicative modalities; class; and sexuality. Through our academic and community-based work, language is central because of its capacity to both oppress and empower, to dehumanize and to make whole, to bring suffering and to bring joy.
TransTalks & Other TRILL Events
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IGALA 2025
Cooper Bedin & Montreal Benesch presented their collaborative work with Lal Zimman and Marina Zhukova at the 2025 meeting of the International Gender and Language Association in Montevideo, Uruguay. The talk was entitled, “Expansive, intersectional… and quantitative??: Innovating critical approaches to gendered sociophonetic variationInnovating critical approaches to gendered sociophonetic variation.”
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![A flow chart depicting a series of questions for considering whether to ask about "sex," "gender," or both.]()
LSA Webinar: "Demographics in Linguistics Research: The Sex/Gender Question"
In a webinar sponsored by the Linguistic Society of America, Lal Zimman, Cooper Bedin, Montreal Benesch and Marina Zhukova presented practical guidelines for collecting and representing information about research participants’ genders.
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![A photo of TRILL members dressed up for the performance installation piece at the Society for Linguistic Anthropology's 2025 meeting]()
"Trans Pear Film Live!" at the Society for Linguistic Anthropology (2025)
At SLA in Chicago, the lab organized a performance installation piece about the Pear Film, reimagined as a queer/trans text based on trans interviewees’ readings of the film. Participants included Cooper Bedin, Montreal Benesch, Crystal Gong, Nicky Macias, Dozandri Mendoza & Marissa Morgan.
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![A screenshot of the GatherTown platform]()
"Representing everyone else outside these two boring genders" at LingComm 25
Cooper Bedin & Montreal Benesch presented on their work that also appears as a chapter in Sex Change and the City.
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![NWAV Miami logo]()
TRILL presents at NWAV Miami!
At this year’s New Ways of Analyzing Variation, TRILL members will present on our project on gender and race attribution. The talk is entitled “Telling a (racio)gender: Morphosyntactic variation and identity attribution in transgender English/Spanish speakers’ ‘Pear Stories’” and will be presented on Thursday, 11/7, at 2:25-2:40pm.
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![A yellow and pink image with an outline of Florida and a person holding up an empty sign that reads (__/__), suggesting the person's pronouns are missing from the image. The text says "Amicus curiae brief in support of trans teachers in Florida."]()
Dr. Zimman leads amicus for challenge to Florida's anti-pronoun law
In collaboration with New York law firm Kramer Levin, Dr. Lal Zimman authored a scholarly amicus brief endorsed by the Linguistic Society of America. The brief outlines linguistically-informed argues in support of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s challenge to a Florida statute that prohibits trans teachers from sharing their pronouns with students.
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![Dr. Lal Zimman accepting the Linguistic Society of America's 2024 Zwicky Award from Dr. John Baugh]()
Dr. Lal Zimman receives the Linguistic Society of America's 2024 Zwicky Award
I am so honored to be the 2024 recipient of the Linguistic Society of America’s Arnold Zwicky Award. The award is named for the LSA’s first openly gay president, Dr. Arnold Zwicky, who also played an important role in my earliest days as a linguist via engagement on the Out in Linguistics email list and occasionally in relation to Language Log. I am humbled to be recognized in his name.
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![UCSB Linguists at the LSA (not pictured: Lal in his hotel room with a migraine)]()
TRILL at LSA 2024
Lab members presented at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, some of which can now be found in the LSA Proceedings:
Workshop: “The gender question: Current best practices for asking about sex/gender in linguistic research”
Cooper Bedin, Montreal Benesch, Kirby Conrod (Swarthmore), Marina Zhukova, Lal ZimmanCurrent norms and best practices for collecting and representing sex/gender in linguistics: Towards ethical and inclusive methodologies”
Cooper Bedin, Montreal Benesch, Marina Zhukova, Lal Zimman“Corporate trans inclusion: Discursive strategies of pronoun commodification online,” Cedar E. Brown (University of California Santa Barbara, USA)
“#Bi Twitter: A keyness analysis of bisexual discourses on Twitter,” Chloe Willis, Simon Todd (University of California Santa Barbara, USA)
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![AAA 2023: "Transitions" theme logo]()
TRILL Members at AAA 2023
Lab members organized and participated in several panels at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association:
“Trans-cending Realms and Selves, Pasts and Futures: Language and the Politics of Remembering” (Organizer: Dozandri C. Mendoza)
“Trans linguistic logics: Spatial and embodied epistemologies across modalities” (Organizers: Lal Zimman, Joshua Raclaw & Ariana Steele)
“Trans linguistic logics: Pronominal and grammatical epistemologies” (Organizers: Joshua Raclaw, Ariana Steele & Lal Zimman)
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TransTalk: "Considering semiotic agency in studying trans language"
Dr. J. Calder (they/she), University of Colorado, Boulder
April 17, 2023, 10:30am-12:00pm
Zoom & South Hall 4430CFor Zoom link, email the TRILL lab manager at transresearchinlinguisticslab at gmail dot com
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![Members of TRILL on Zoom with Dr. Kirby Conrod]()
TransTalk: Research workshop on neopronouns
Dr. Kirby Conrod (they/them), Swarthmore College
January 23, 2023, 10:30am-12:00pm
Zoom & South Hall 4430C -
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TransTalk: "'I don’t know, it’s something that I have been playing with a little bit': The social contexts that continuously mediate trans men’s disclosure decisions"
Tristen Kade (he/they), UC Santa Barbara (Sociology)
February 23, 2023, 10:30am-12:00pm
Zoom & South Hall 4430C -
![Members of TRILL on Zoom with Dr. Túlio Bermúdez Mejía]()
TransTalk: "Euphoric Transmutation: Queer linguistics beyond representation and inclusion"
Dr. Túlio Bermúdez Mejía (he/they/él/ellx)
University of ChicagoNovember 28, 2022, 10:30am-12:00pm
TRILL Members
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Dr. Lal Zimman (he/they)
Lab Director / PI
Research interests: trans linguistics, sociophonetics, embodiment, pronouns, trans inclusive language & pedagogy, stance & affect, trans voice training & SLP, online trans communities, drag performance and media, language & social justice
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Kristy Ali (she/her)
PhD Candidate, Linguistics
Research Interests Sign language linguistics, Language documentation and description, Typology, Phonology, Caribbean sign languages, Linguistic ethnography, Tactile languages, Language and social justice
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Cedar Brown (they/them)
PhD Candidate, Linguistics
Research interests: sociocultural linguistics, trans linguistics, computational linguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, sociophonetics, trans inclusive language, online trans communities, language and identity, trans/queer theory, community-engaged research
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Nicky Macias (she/ella)
PhD Candidate, Linguistics
Research interests: Sociocultural signed linguistics; signed language interpreting; trans interpreter communities; interpreter ethics; embodiment and interpreting; trans linguistics; signed sociophonetics; language ethnography
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Marissa Morgan (she/her)
PhD Candidate, Linguistics
Research interests: Sociocultural linguistics; linguistic anthropology; discourse analysis; African-American Language and Culture; embodiment; space and place; language and ritual; discourses of death, grief and mourning
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Cooper Bedin (they/them)
PhD Student, Linguistics
Research Interests: sociophonetics, computational linguistics, English second-person pronouns, nonbinary identity talk, trans-affirming statistical methods
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Crystal Gong (they/them)
PhD Student, East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford University
Research interests: gender and sexuality, and identity, sociophonetics, Japanese, discourse analysis, trans linguistics, and linguistic anthropology
BA, Language, Culture and Society, UCSB (2022)
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Montreal Benesch (they/them)
MA Student, Linguistics
Reserach Interests: Sociocultural linguistics; linguistic anthropology; queer linguistics; trans linguistics; sociophonetics; social justice; operationalizing gender; acquisition, representation, and accessing of indexicality.
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Ece Genc (they/them)
BA student
Research interests: TBA
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Solaire Denaud (she/her) [erstwhile member]
PhD Student, Comparative Literature
Research interests: TBA
TRILL Alumnx
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Archie Crowley (they/them)
PhD, Linguistics (2023), University of South Carolina
Dissertation:Language Ideologies and Linguistic Activism in Transgender Communities in the U.S. South
Current affiliation: Assistant Professor of English, Elon University
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Julien De Jesus (they/them)
MA, Linguistics (2023)
MA Thesis: “We Need to be Telling Our Own Stories”: Creating a Home for Filipinx Americans in Linguistics
Current affiliation: San Gabriel Valley LGBTQ Center (Community Researcher)
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Brooke English (it/its)
MA, Linguistics (2022)
MA thesis:r/TransVoice: Emotions and Community-Based Voice Training
Current affiliation: Learning Research & Development Center (Research and Evaluation Specialist)
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Jazmine Exford (she/her)
PhD, Linguistics (2023)
Dissertation: Raciogendered Embodiment and Indexicality in the Acquisition Experiences of Racialized Spanish Language Learners
Current affiliation: Assistant Professor of Spanish Linguistics, Florida International University
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Aris Keshav (they/he)
MA, Linguistics (2021)
Current affiliation: Concordia University
MA thesis: I love you: Normativity, Power, and Romance in Metalinguistic Commentary
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Dozandri C. Mendoza (they/elle)
PhD, Linguistics (2025)
Dissertation: Dando Cunt and (Duck)Walking with the Transcestrxs: The Semiotics of Puerto Rican Ballroom Performance
Current affiliation: Assistant Professor of Sociolinguistics and Applied Linguistics at CUNY Hunter College
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deandre miles-hercules (they/them)
PhD, Linguistics (2025)
Dissertation:Discourse on Gendered Blackness in the Public Square: Media, Literature, and Scholarship
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Jordan Tudisco (they/them)
PhD, Comparative Literature (2024)
Dissertation: Staking Our Claim: Self-Making, World-Making and Survival in Trans-Authored Narratives
Current affiliation: UC Presidential Postdoctoral Scholar, UC Berkeley
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Chloe Willis (they/them)
PhD, Linguistics (2023)
Dissertation:The Theoretical and Methodological Implications of Bisexuality in Language and Sexuality Research
Current affiliation: Department of Justice Research Services Branch (Research Data Specialist II)
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Marina Zhukova (she/her)
PhD, Linguistics (2025)
Dissertation:Conventions in Digital Communication: A Linguistic Analysis of Emojis and Human-Computer Interactions
Current affiliation: Microsoft AI (Language Engineer)
Reviews & testimonials
“Anthropology in ruins.”
–A review of the title (yes, just the title) of our AAA panel, “Pronouns, bottoms, cat-ears, and cuerpes, girl: For an intersectional trans linguistic anthropology” (2022)
Research Areas
Resources
