Bio

Dr. Merritt's research investigates 1) the acoustic-phonetic variability that differentiates speakers of varying gender identities (e.g., non-binary, transgender men, and transgender women) and 2) listener's perception of this variability.

Awards and Honors

• The University of Texas at El Paso Research & Innovation First-Time PI Award - The University of Texas at El Paso (04/24/2024)
• American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Research Mentoring-Pair Travel Award - American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (08/01/2023-08/31/2023)
• Acoustical Society of America Early Career Travel Award - The University of Texas at El Paso (04/01/2023-04/30/2023)
• ASHA Advancing Academic Research Careers (AARC) Award - American Speech-Language Hearing Association (04/01/2023-04/30/2023)

• Ph D in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University (2022)
• MS in Speech-Language Pathology, East Tennessee State University (2008)
• BA in Spanish, East Tennessee State University (2006)

Publications

• Development and pilot of an interdisciplinary health education program to address health disparities for gender-diverse persons at the U.S./Mexico border International Journal of Transgender Health (2024), Brandon M. Merritt, Oralia Loza, Patricia Lara, Christopher G. Medlin, Andi Tiscareno.
• Diversity of research participants in communication sciences and disorders Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups 9 3 (2024), Ryan Millager, Jacod Feldman, Zackary Williams, Kiiya Shibata, Keysha Martinez-Torres, Katherine Bryan, Dillon Pruett, Jade Mitchell, Jennifer Markfeld, Brandon M. Merritt, Derek Daniels, Robin Jones, Tiffany Woynaroski.
• Auditory free classification of gender diverse speakers The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 155 2 (2024), Brandon M. Merritt, Tessa Bent, Rowan Kilgore, Cameron Eads.
• Speech beyond the binary: Some acoustic-phonetic and auditory-perceptual characteristics of non-binary speakers JASA Express Letters 3 3 (2023), Brandon M. Merritt.
• Perceptual Representation of Speaker Gender ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (2022), Brandon M. Merritt.

Presentations

• Research on Gender Measurement (2024), Volume Virtual, Brandon M. Merritt.
• Fundamental frequency patterns across gender, task, and language in Spanish-English bilinguals (2024), Volume Ottawa, ON, June Contreras, Brandon M. Merritt.
• Perceptual representation of speaker gender in Spanish-English bilingual listeners (2024), Volume Ottawa, ON, Brandon M. Merritt.
• Cultivating Community Relationships for Engagement Scholarship (2024), Volume El Paso, TX, Brandon M. Merritt.
• Interactions between voice-gender and word-gender perceptions (2024), Volume Fort Worth, TX, Athena Kirby, Valerie Freeman, Tori Courouleau, Brandon M. Merritt.

• I-REACH Rural Veterans
• An interdisciplinary health education program to address transgender health inequity in an underserved, predominantly Latinx community
• Developing Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Speech Therapy Targets for Spanish Speaking Transgender Individuals