Alicia Beckford Wassink is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington and the Director of the Sociolinguistics Laboratory. She earned her PhD in 1999 from the University of Michigan. Her research interests primarily focus on sociolinguistics, which examines the relationship between language and social contexts, including social network structures and language attitudes that result from dialect contact. Additionally, she investigates phonetics, encompassing the acoustic properties of spoken language and the physiological aspects of human speech. Prof. Wassink's significant work involves the study of Jamaican Creole, where she conducts fieldwork in Jamaica, with the University of the West Indies serving as her home base.