Ariel Chan

Assistant Professor

Department of Languages and Applied Linguistics,

University of California, Santa Cruz
Email: arielchan@ucsc.edu

I am an Assistant Professor of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where I also direct the Bilingualism, Sociolinguistics, and Cognition (BiSoN) lab.

Prior to joining UCSC in July 2025, I was a Provostial Fellow and lecturer in Linguistics at Stanford University. I completed my Ph.D. in East Asian Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles in June 2023, where I was co-advised by Shoichi Iwasaki and Judith Kroll. My dissertation research examined code-switching in three groups of Cantonese-English Bilinguals with diverse language experience and cultural identities (available for review here). My research was supported by a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award (BCS-2042479) from the National Science Foundation. ​​

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My scholarship uniquely intersects the disciplines of bilingualism, heritage and second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and interactional linguistics. Specifically, I'm interested in looking into how bilinguals' cultural identity and language experience impact their language processing and cognitive control from an integrated psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approach. For my full CV, please contact me.