David Dal Brun
Applied Linguist, University Lecturer & Human Performance Specialist
My work brings together language instruction, applied linguistics, phonetics, voice, movement, and human performance through a question that has followed me for most of my life: How do complex human systems learn, coordinate, adapt, and perform?
Language, voice, and movement are usually treated as separate disciplines. I see them as different expressions of the same underlying system — one in which perception, cognition, sound, movement, culture, and the body continuously interact.
One system, three expressions
Language, voice, and movement may appear to be separate disciplines. In my work, they are different expressions of the same underlying system — shaped by perception, feedback, learning, adaptation, and coordination.
Language & Applied Linguistics
Language is the scientific foundation of my work. I focus particularly on applied phonetics and phonology, pronunciation, second-language acquisition, multilingualism, and the interaction between sound, meaning, cognition, and culture.
Voice & Vocal Performance
My work with voice grows directly out of applied phonetics and phonology. I approach speaking, singing, pronunciation, and vocal performance as coordinated acoustic, physiological, perceptual, and motor processes rather than as a collection of isolated techniques.
Movement & Physical Performance
My work with movement goes beyond conventional fitness. I focus on physical readiness, body awareness, breathing, motor coordination, and conditioning — including integrated physical preparation for singers and other performers, where voice and body need to function as one system.
How I got here
Perception came first
Sound was one of the first ways I learned to make sense of the world — but never sound alone.
I was fascinated by how people spoke, by the movements that produced speech, by faces, mouths, gestures, accents, rhythm, and the subtle relationship between what could be heard and what could be seen.
Growing up in a multilingual and multicultural environment, different languages and ways of speaking were simply part of everyday life. Long before I knew words such as phonetics or phonology, I was already observing how the same human system could organize sound and movement in remarkably different ways.
That way of perceiving communication — as something simultaneously auditory, visual, motor, and social — has remained central to how I learn, teach, and work.
At the same time, I was rarely still. Sport, outdoor activity, and physical training were another constant part of my early life. I became interested not only in physical ability, but also in discipline, preparedness, and the process through which repeated practice changes what a person is capable of doing.
Looking back, language and movement were already asking me variations of the same question:
How does a human system learn to coordinate itself?
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Perception, language & early movement
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Language, academia & interpreting
Language gave the question a scientific framework
After graduating from college, I continued my academic training in linguistics at Boston University, then completed a degree in Translation and Interpreting at SSLMIT, University of Trieste, graduating 110/110 cum laude, and later completed a further degree in General Linguistics at the University of Padua, again graduating 110/110 cum laude.
For a period, my academic and professional life had me moving back and forth across the pond, between Europe and North America. A Fulbright experience led to teaching and academic work at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, followed by further university teaching at Brown University.
Translation and conference interpreting brought language into a very different kind of performance environment. Working across languages in real time — including assignments at the European Parliament, as well as medical, scientific, technical, and professional contexts — reinforced my interest in what happens when knowledge must become accurate, adaptive action under real-world constraints.
Today, multilingualism remains both a professional reality and a field of personal experimentation. I teach and work across English, Italian, German, Spanish, French, and Serbo-Croatian, and I am a member of the International Association of Hyperpolyglots (HYPIA).
For me, however, multilingualism is not primarily about accumulating languages. Each new language requires the learner to reorganize perception: unfamiliar sounds must become meaningful, new articulatory movements must become automatic, grammatical structures must become intuitive, and social conventions must gradually stop feeling foreign.
In that sense, learning languages has also been one of the ways in which I have studied learning itself. A second language is not only something we know — it is something we must learn to perform cognitively and physically.
From language to embodiment
Over time, linguistics led me toward a broader question:
Can cognition really be understood independently of the body through which we perceive, communicate, and act?
That question brought my linguistic background into dialogue with medical, psychological, and neuroscientific research.
I am a researcher and scientific author, with both first-author and collaborative work in areas where language, cognition, embodiment, body representation, and health intersect.
My research has included work on linguistic embodiment and embodied cognition, examining, among other questions, how lexical information interacts with representations of bodily actions.
For me, this was not a departure from linguistics. It was a continuation of it.
Language does not exist in a vacuum. We speak through a body, perceive speech through sensory systems, learn through interaction with an environment, and build meaning through experiences that are simultaneously cognitive, perceptual, and physical.
The body is not the opposite of cognition. It is one of the conditions that make cognition possible.
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Research, embodiment & cognition
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Voice, studio & performance
Voice grew out of phonetics
My work with voice developed naturally from the same scientific foundation.
Applied phonetics and phonology gave me the tools to understand articulation, acoustic output, speech sounds, and the relationship between what a speaker produces and what another person perceives.
From pronunciation and spoken language, my interests expanded into speaking voice, singing, public speaking, studio work, and vocal performance.
I also undertook a period of study at Berklee College of Music, adding a further performance-based perspective to my work in voice and singing.
Over the years, I have studied a wide range of approaches to vocal training. But I have never wanted my work to depend on one branded method. Instead, I keep returning to a more fundamental question:
What can actually be explained by phonetics, acoustics, physiology, perception, and motor learning?
That question informs the way I work with singers, speakers, actors, teachers, choirs, and other professional voice users, including performers working toward demanding and international careers. My experience also includes substantial studio work as both a speaker and singer, alongside live performance, theater, teaching, and coaching.
Since 2012, this has also included long-term work as a voice and singing coach with Soldiers’ Theatre at Camp Ederle, within an international American military community.
For performers in particular, vocal preparation does not always make sense in isolation from the rest of the body. My work can therefore integrate vocal coaching with physical preparation, considering breathing, movement, conditioning, fatigue, recovery, and the overall demands of performance.
Movement completed the model
Movement was never an additional professional interest that appeared later.
Physical activity and sport were part of my life long before I studied movement formally, and I worked as a personal trainer while completing my university studies.
My professional training later expanded into exercise science and physical performance, including credentials as a NASM Certified Personal Trainer (NASM-CPT) and Performance Enhancement Specialist (NASM-PES), as well as registration as a Personal Trainer within the Italian CONI system and advanced training in sports nutrition. My training in nutrition also includes the CISSN credential and further specialist education in evidence-based nutrition coaching.
But what interests me today extends beyond conventional fitness.
Strength, conditioning, and physical readiness matter. So do breathing, body awareness, perception, recovery, motor coordination, and the ability to regulate movement efficiently.
This becomes particularly important in my work with performers. A singer may need vocal coordination, but also the physical capacity to perform repeatedly under fatigue. An actor may need breath, speech, movement, and presence to function as a single system. A professional performer may need conditioning that supports performance without compromising the specific demands of the voice.
For this reason, I integrate physical preparation and vocal coaching for singers and other performers when the demands of performance call for both. But my work with movement is broader than performer preparation alone. I also work with people who want to improve movement quality, physical capacity, body awareness, and fitness from a perspective that goes beyond physique-focused training or conventional bodybuilding aesthetics.
The aim is not simply to change how the body looks, but to improve how it moves, adapts, performs, and is experienced.
The body is how we act on the world. It is also part of how we experience it.
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Movement, conditioning & performer preparation
Teaching, research & practice
I have always resisted separating academic work from practical work.
Today I teach Scientific English and professionally oriented English for healthcare at the University of Padua and the University of Verona, across programs including nursing, midwifery, physiotherapy, radiology, and other health professions.
I am also a researcher and scientific author, with first-author and collaborative work in areas where language, cognition, embodiment, body representation, and health intersect.
At the same time, I continue to work directly with language learners, singers, speakers, performers, professionals, and people interested in movement and physical performance.
For me, these activities reinforce one another.
Research makes practice more critical.
Practice exposes questions that research may overlook.
Teaching forces both to become clear.
Ultimately, they also reflect a broader idea of human flourishing. The classical Greek tradition understood education not simply as the acquisition of isolated skills, but as the cultivation of the person as a whole. In a similar spirit, I see language, voice, movement, knowledge, and physical capacity as interdependent dimensions of human development.
The aim is not excellence in one domain at the expense of the others, but greater coherence, agency, adaptability, and expressive possibility across body, mind, and communication.
To develop a human capacity fully is also to understand how it belongs to the whole person.
Work with me
I work with individuals, performers, professionals, educators, and organizations through courses, workshops, assessments, consultations, and collaborative projects across language, voice, and movement.
For performers, this can also mean integrating vocal preparation with physical preparation, so that voice, body, conditioning, movement, and performance demands are considered as parts of one system.