Andries W. Coetzee is Professor of Linguistics and Director of the African Studies Center at the University of Michigan. Since receiving his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2004 he has been a major contributor in research in the fields of Phonetics and Phonology. His career has been spent teaching in South Africa and at the University of Michigan, and being heavily involved with the Linguistics Institute of the Linguistic Society of America. In 2011 he received the first ever Early Career Award from the Linguistic Society of America, and in 2015 was inducted as a fellow of this Society.