Aside from my academic interests, I have many artistic and personal ones.
I enjoy analog film photography, mostly focusing on black and white film.
Shooting film feels more rewarding and more meaningful than shooting digital. Limitations placed by the amount of exposures per roll require careful consideration of subjects, composition, and camera settings. Shooting in black and white forces you to pay more attention to lighting and detail.
Playing around with various developers and development techniques also gives you a great deal of control in the process and the process itself is very tactile, from start to finish, if you want it to be.
See examples of my work at my Photography page.
I play acoustic and electric guitars, electric bass, autoharp, Arabic oud and ney. Primarily, I play for myself, although I have participated in a few band projects.
I enjoy a variety of music, although I do broadly gravitate towards 70s folk-rock and 90s Russian rock.
Coming from a small, yet highly diverse area, I have always been fascinated by foreign languages and cultures. Especially in ways that language influences culture.
I find that this ties well with my current research on language models and ways they interpret and process language.
Natively spoken:
Can get by in:
Some knowledge/mutual intelligibility:
I play a large variety of tabletop and video games. In particular, I enjoy riichi mahjong, tabletop RPGs that are not D&D or its close relatives, German board games, social deception games, arena FPS, and fighting games.