Dr. Laura Downing

Biography

Laura J. Downing earned her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1990, focusing her dissertation on the problems of Jita tonology. She has held visiting lecturer positions at several prestigious universities including the University of Michigan, UC-San Diego, UBC, University of Illinois, UC-Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania from 1990 to 2001. Between 2001 and 2012, she was a research fellow and project leader at ZAS Berlin, concentrating on the syntax-prosody interface in Bantu languages, particularly with a focus on Chewa, Tumbuka, and Zulu. From August 1, 2015, to December 31, 2019, she held a Professor-II position in the Department of Language and Linguistics at the University of the Arctic, UiTromsø, Norway. Downing's research interests are mainly associated with the formal analysis of prosody in African languages, including prosodic morphology and lexical tone systems in phrasal prosody. She has led various research projects and has received grants from NSF, NWO, and DFG to support her fieldwork in Zimbabwe and Malawi. Furthermore, she has been actively involved in editorial boards and scientific committees, contributing to important linguistic conferences and publications.

Research Interests