Jessica Coon is a professor of linguistics at McGill University and Canada Research Chair in syntax and indigenous languages.
[4] Coon received her PhD from MIT in 2010 with a dissertation on aspect-based split ergativity, with a focus on the Ch'ol (Mayan) language, and cross-linguistic extensions.
[8] Coon was consulted during the finalization of the script for Denis Villeneuve's Arrival for her linguistics expertise.
[9] She wrote a piece for the Museum of the Moving Image on fieldwork and alien grammars, following her work on Arrival.
[10] Since 2018, Coon has led a National Geographic project "to record, transcribe, and translate narratives across different dialects of Ch'ol.