Kate Tallon is a sociophonetician whose work focuses particularly on language contact, bilingualism, and minority-language communities. Her research methods combine sociolinguistic fieldwork with quantitative phonetic analysis to investigate how linguistic and social factors interact in shaping patterns of speech variation and language change.

Her doctoral research explored phonetic variation in the English spoken by native Irish speakers, challenging traditional accounts of Irish influence on English and highlighting the complex role of social factors in language change. Her broader research interests include sociolinguistics, phonetics, language contact, dialect variation, linguistic identity, language change, borderland communities, and minority-language settings. 

Kate teaches and supervises across a range of areas, including general linguistics, phonetics, phonology, and French linguistics.