Joseph Salmons is the Lester W. J. "Smoky" Seifert Professor of Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison., where he is also co-founder and Director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures. His work focuses on language change in the context of linguistic theory, especially speech sounds. He serves as editor of Diachronica: International Journal for Historical Linguistics and his main publications include The Oxford Handbook of Historical Phonology (co-edited with Patrick Honeybone; OUP, 2015) and Germanic Heritage Languages in North America: Acquisition, Attrition, and Change (co-edited with Janne Bondi Johannessen; Benjamins, 2015).