I am a second-year PhD student working on morphosyntax and semantics at the University of Maryland. I work mostly on 'anti-lexicalist' or 'neo-constructionist' syntax, and how compositional semantics can best build on those results. I also work on quantification in cognition at large, following much work that began at UMD. My advisors are Jeff Lidz and Alexander Williams. Before starting my graduate work, I read Philosophy & Linguistics at the University of Oxford, and was awarded a Congratulatory First Class. To find out more about my work, click here.

When not working on linguistics, I enjoy playing table-top games (in increasing order of animacy, from Azul to pool, with Dungeons and Dragons somewhere in between). I am occasionally found at the College Park Parkrun. I also love listening to 90's alternative rock. My favourite band is Sleater-Kinney.

I was born in Dahanu, India, and moved to the United Kingdom in 2007, when I was six years old. My heritage language is Gujarati. When I am not in Maryland, I live in Dorset, England.

My pronouns are he/him/his. I am happy to be addressed as 'Mal' ([mal]) or 'Malhaar', which can be pronounced either [malhɑːɹ] or [mʌlhɑːɾ]. I share this name with a raga, which has a legend associated with it.

If you are citing something I wrote or said, I prefer to be cited as "Malhaar Shah".