From Edinburgh to Albuquerque

Briony Jones is a third-year graduate student pursuing her Master’s degree in Linguistics. Before starting her graduate studies at UNM she had never been to New Mexico—even though UNM is the only graduate school that she applied to. Briony hails from the United Kingdom and had to cover a lot of territory to get here once accepted into the Master’s degree program.

She was attracted to UNM because its Linguistics Department offered a specialization in Native Southwestern languages. While an undergraduate at Edinburgh University in Scotland, Briony wrote her thesis on the History of the English Language in the Southwestern United States, thus launching her interest in Native American languages and culture. Since graduate programs in the United Kingdom consist almost entirely of conducting research, Britony decided to pursue graduate study in the United States where she could get more classroom instruction.

In addition to the classes she’s taking as a graduate student, Briony is involved in a number of other activities including working as a Teaching Assistant in UNM’s English Department starting with English 101 then moving on to teach English 102. She says that teaching has given her the opportunity to be much more involved in the University than she would have been otherwise, and it gives her insight into the UNM undergraduate experience--not to mention that she enjoys it and feels it can be especially rewarding when both students and teachers are engaged.

In an effort to make her classes as interesting as possible, Briony tries to model them on classes she enjoys as a student by infusing history, politics, and debate. She also says that teaching has forced her to become much more organized--an important skill considering that in addition to the classes she taking and the course she teaches, she’s also involved in a language revitalization project at the Nambé Pueblo.

Working with Pueblo members and other UNM graduate students and faculty, she is developing a dictionary and other documentation of the Nambé language. The group recently generated much interest and enthusiasm at the WAIL (Workshop on American Indigenous Languages) meeting at the University of California-Santa Barbara where they presented a paper on the project. The expertise in language revitalization here at UNM is one reason that Briony may continue on to get her Ph.D.

Although Briony claims that are not many similarities between the UK and New Mexico, she is quite happy to be here pursuing her life’s passion. Life in New Mexico seems to suit her.

Linguistics Department: http://www.unm.edu/~linguist/
College of Arts and Sciences: http://www.unm.edu/~artsci/