Cynthia Clopper, professor of linguistics, was named interim chair of the Department of Linguistics, effective Aug. 15, 2018, through June 30, 2019.

Clopper received her BA from Duke University and MA and PhD from Indiana University. She spent one year as a postdoctoral researcher at Indiana and one year as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University before becoming a faculty member at Ohio State in 2006. 

Her current research examines variation in spoken language processing; how children perceive and interpret speech to make judgments about social categories; and how perception of regional dialect variation changes over the lifespan. She is also co-editor of the journal Language and Speech and has served on the editorial boards for the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and the Journal of Phonetics.

"I am looking forward to working with my colleagues and our students to sustain the long-standing pattern of excellence in research, teaching and service in the Department of Linguistics," Clopper said.