I completed my PhD in Second Language Acquisition at the University of Maryland and my second M.A. in TESOL at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California. Before that, I studied East Asian philosophy in South Korea, where I did my first M.A. in philosophy at Hallym University and a B.A. in philosophy at Seoul National University.
Most of my research has been conducted within the framework of cognitive linguistics. In the last decade, much of my research has used this framework to explore religious language. I'm especially interested in how people conceptualize and talk about mystical experiences.
I'm originally from the United States, but I've spent much of my adult life living in Asia, mostly in Korea and Japan. Sapporo, where I currently live, is has everything a person could desire, beautiful winters where the entire landscape is covered in snow and mild summers with plenty of hot springs and mountains to visit.
I am currently working on a book that uses a cognitive linguistic framework to investigate how people talk about mystical experiences that occur outside of religious traditions.