Mary Allison completed both her MA and PhD in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
She has served as a mentor to teaching assistants and as graduate supervisor of beginning-level German courses, and she is passionate about strengthening pedagogical practice and curriculum development. Allison has focused on the representation of a multicultural Germany at all levels of German instruction, as well as the thoughtful incorporation of technology and social media.
Additionally, she publishes on topics in Germanic linguistics, and her main interests lie in the growing subfield of historical sociolinguistics. Her doctoral thesis, Immigration and dialect formation in Nuremberg: The role of koineization in the development of the diminutive suffix system, investigates the intersection of historical events and language change. She connects issues of historical migration and language change with modern contexts, for example in discussions of migration in modern Germany.