J. Tiegs is currently a lecturer of Spanish in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. She learned Spanish from a young age, prompting her interest in language and her later travels to Spanish-speaking countries. She has spent long periods of time working and/or doing research in Peru and Chile, as well as shorter stays in Costa Rica, Ecuador and Spain. Her training is as a laboratory phonologist working with Romance Languages. She studies phonetics, phonology and sociolinguistics, with particular interest in speech perception and dialectal accommodation. Most recently, Jessica has researched native-speaker perception of European Portuguese vowels and marginal contrasts.
In addition to her research and teaching background, Jessica worked as a medical interpreter here in Athens for six years.
She also has served as assistant director of the University of Arizona's study abroad program in Valladolid, Spain.
Education
Dr. Tiegs received her PhD from the University of Arizona and her masters at UGA, both in Hispanic Linguistics. Her bachelors is also from UGA, in Romance Languages and Anthropology.