Tom Poulton is a lecturer in Linguistics at La Trobe University. He conducted his PhD in linguistics at Monash University. His research interests include understanding how we, as people, encode information that is important to us about the world, and to uncover regularities across languages. Specifically, his research areas have so far focussed on the language of spatial referencing, the language of sensory experiences, and phonaesthesia.

Tom conducted his doctoral thesis on the language of olfaction in English, which investigated the ways in which we describe smells, and the (lack of!) words we have to do so and found that our language reflects our ecological, cultural, and communicative contexts. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Language and Cognition, Linguistic Typology, and Language Sciences. Currently, Tom is continuing his research in these areas, and plans to continue exploring such research topics in the context of semantic change.

Tom has taught numerous undergraduate courses in linguistics across Monash University and La Trobe University. He was awarded the Dean’s Teaching Associate Commendation in 2022, from the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.