I am Anna Marie Trester, and I currently live in Washington DC, where I moved 5 years ago to do my doctorate in Sociolinguistics at Georgetown University.  I am currently in the final stages of writing my dissertation, and hope to be defending this Fall. My dissertation project explores the linguistic style of a community of performers of improvisational theater. I explore how their abilities and awareness of language (onstage) are manifested in a unique linguistic and interactional style (offstage).

I am originally from Toronto, Canada, and my interest in linguistics may have been impacted by the moving we did (and the accents I had to change) when I was living in Wisconsin, Arizona, Texas, Costa Rica, and New York.