Montreal “Monty” Benesch is an educator, linguist, and former nuclear scientist based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. They hold a BA in Linguistics from Reed College (‘22), and they are passionate about science communication, linguistic justice, and environmental activism (among other things).

Monty previously served as an intern at the National Museum of Language, where they helped develop the Virtual Field Trip program, connecting classrooms in Prince George’s County, Maryland with Museum exhibits via Zoom. While at Reed, Montreal taught with the Science Outreach program, through which they brought hands-on science experiments to 5th grade classrooms in the Portland metropolitan area. Montreal was concurrently a Senior Reactor Operator and supervisor at Reed’s nuclear research reactor, responsible for training incoming staff members in nuclear physics theory and practice.

Montreal has an upcoming chapter in the volume Battlefield linguistics: Contemporary contestations of language gender and sexuality, entitled “/s/tylizing the /s/elf: The Concurrent Fluidity of Gender and Language,” based on their queer sociophonetics BA thesis on the phonetic construction of gender by genderfluid individuals.