[1] In 2000, Hay gained a PhD titled Causes and Consequences of Word Structure at Northwestern University in Illinois in the Linguistics department.
[1] Hay's research has revealed that a New Zealand dialect took only a single generation to emerge.
[2] She has explored how speech perception and production is influenced by past experiences and current context, including environmental factors: for example, New Zealanders hear vowels differently if they are in a room with toy kangaroos and koalas as opposed to toy kiwi.
[2][3] Hay is the director of the New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour, a multi-disciplinary research centre based at the University of Canterbury.
[2] Hay received a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship in 2011,[6] a James Cook Research Fellowship and a University of Canterbury Research Award in 2015,[7][3] and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi in 2015.