Alex is a PhD Candidate. She was born and raised in Italy, near Florence, and she earned her BA and MA in Chinese Language and Culture at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. In 2009 she moved to China where she worked as a language teacher and school manager until 2017. Here at IU she is pursuing her PhD with a major in Chinese linguistics and a minor in Second Language Studies. Her academic interests consist of many, ranging from comparative morpho-syntax to second and third adult language acquisition. She has been working as an associate instructor for EALC for four years and she has taught a variety of area study courses pertaining to East Asian society, politics, culture, and literature. She is also actively involved in activities outside EALC, including her role as a lead editor for the IU Linguistics Club Working Papers and her collaboration with the Italian language program. Her recent works include two studies on third language acquisition (involving Romance languages and Chinese) and a study on non-native acquisition of Chinese relative clauses. She is currently working on her dissertation which explores the acquisition of conditional sentences by non-native speakers of Chinese.