Sharese King was named a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in 2020 and is a faculty member in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. As a sociolinguist, King examines the relationship between race and language. Drawing on both ethnographic and experimental techniques, her research explores how African Americans use language to construct multidimensional identities, how linguistic styles come to be racialized as Black, and the social and political consequences of this racialization.
King's work has been published in the Annual Review in Linguistics and the Journal of Sociolinguistics. She's also published in the field’s flagship journal, Language, winning the Best Paper Award in 2017. Additionally, King has been featured on the Vocal Fries podcast and Rap Genius, and also co-authored an editorial in the Los Angeles Times on linguistic bias against African American English.
She obtained her BA cum laude in linguistics from the University of Rochester and her MA and PhD in linguistics from Stanford University, where she was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Most recently, she was a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago.