closeup of a student's shoulder as he watches a lecture

The Henry and Theresa Biggs Lecture in Linguistics

About the Lecture

Due to the generous support of Henry and Theresa Biggs, the Linguistics Program is able to bring a prominent linguist to campus each year to give The Henry and Theresa Biggs Lecture in Linguistics.

Henry Biggs earned his BA in Latin from Harvard and his PhD in Romance Linguistics from UCLA, writing his thesis under Bruce Hayes. He served as Assistant Professor of French then Chair of the Foreign Language Department at Houghton College, then Assistant/Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Washington University, where he also taught Computational Linguistics. He currently is CEO of ofCourse Scheduling and lives in Paris with his wife Theresa. They have four children.   

Theresa McShane Biggs earned her BA in French Literature from UC Berkeley and her MA in Romance Linguistics at UCLA. She taught Italian language at SLU for several years. She currently teaches literacy to unschooled adult immigrants in Paris, France.

Recent Biggs Lectures

Professor Hyde introduces Eric Baković in crowded auditorium

A Typology of Map Interactions Eric Baković, UC San Diego

Phonologists generally assume that the phonology of a language is a map from (inferred) underlying forms, consisting of unitary representations of morphemes, to (observed) surface forms, consisting of potentially alternating representations of those morphemes.

Event Details

Past Biggs Lectures