[3] After studying for a licence (1986) and then an MA (1987) in Anglophone literatures and civilizations at the Université de Bordeaux III, she moved to the United States to study for a further MA in ESL at the University of Massachusetts (1990).
Her subsequent studies took place at Harvard University, where she completed a third MA and then a PhD in linguistics, awarded in 1997.
[4] Post-PhD she spent a year as a visiting scholar in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT.
In 2007 she moved to the University of Michigan to take up a position as associate professor of linguistics and Afroamerican and African studies.
[1] She has also collaborated with geneticists to gain a better understanding of the founding population of Cape Verde using field data and DNA.