• Second language acquisition (especially in young adulthood, midlife, and older adulthood)
• Acquisition of sociolinguistic variation in the second language
• Variationist sociolinguistics and dialectology
• Language variation and change across the lifespan
• Multilingualism
• Research methods and statistics

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich working in the VARIAGE project (Variation in [Second] Language Use and Development Across Retirement), funded by the VELUX Foundation (PI: Prof. Simone E. Pfenninger). I hold a BA (2015–2019) and MA (2019–2020) in German studies from Bowling Green State University (Ohio, USA) and a PhD (2020–2023) in German linguistics from the University of Salzburg, Austria. Before coming to Zurich in 2025, I was a postdoc at the University of Salzburg (2023–2025) and a research and teaching assistant at Bowling Green State University (2019–2020).

My primary research interests include psycholinguistics, variationist sociolinguistics, and second language acquisition (SLA) in adulthood, especially as concerns quantitative approaches and statistical methods. In my work on SLA, I am interested in the role of psychosocial, linguistic, and cognitive factors on the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation in L2 learning during (young) adulthood, and how socioaffective, experiential, and contextual variables impact additional language learning among mature adults. My habilitation project merges psycho- and sociolinguistic approaches in order to investigate how major life events (e.g., entry into the workforce, parenthood, retirement) affect language variation and change across the lifespan.

• Short CV: https://masonwirtz.github.io
• Publications: https://masonwirtz.github.io/Publications/
• Talks & Lectures: https://masonwirtz.github.io/Lectures/
• Third-Party Funding & Projects: https://masonwirtz.github.io/Projects/