My name is Ian Joo (주이안 in Korean, 朱易安 in Chinese). My last name, Joo, is pronounced [tɕʰù]. My first name, Ian, is pronounced [i.an], and has the meaning of ease (i) and comfort (an).
I was born in Daejeon, South Korea.
I am an associate professor at the Otaru University of Commerce.
My field of expertise is linguistic typology. My research interests are mainly linguistic iconicity and areal linguistics. In other words, I am interested in (i) the resemblance between form and meaning and (ii) how languages that are spoken close by develop similarities or dissimilarities.
I obtained my doctoral degree at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University under the supervision of Dr. Yu-Yin Hsu and the co-supervision of Prof. David Chor Shing Li.
Currently, I am focusing on building and analyzing Phonotacticon, a cross-linguistic database of phonotactic information.
While not doing research, I enjoy hiking, painting, traveling, playing badminton, reading novels, and watching Disney films.