Victoria is a field linguist with primary and secondary foci on theoretical syntax and historical linguistics. Her research centres on three questions:

1.  How does the syntactic typology of Austronesian languages inform the uniformity vs. variation in language design?;

2. How does the synchronic variation among genetically related languages shed light on patterns of language change?;​

3. How can linguistic evidence illuminate our understanding of the peopling of Southeast Asia and the Pacific?

To answer these questions, her research focuses on the typology of Austronesian languages. She is currently working on a Marsden standard grant to investigate (1)-(3) through systematic comparisons of western Austronesian languages with east Polynesian languages.

A secondary focus of her research is linguistic subgrouping (i.e. determining the inter-relationship among genetically related languages). She has used multidisciplinary data to re-examine the patterns of the Austronesian diaspora under a Marsden fast-start grant.

More about her research can be found at https://www.victoria-chen.com/

Victoria is currently the editor of Te Reo: Journal of the New Zealand Linguistic Society. Info about the journal can be found at https://nzlingsoc.org/journal/about-the-journal-te-reo/