J. Tiegs is currently a lecturer of Spanish in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. She learned Spanish from a young age, prompting her interest in language and her later travels to Spanish-speaking countries. She has spent long periods of time working and/or doing research in Peru and Chile, as well as shorter stays in Costa Rica, Ecuador and Spain. Her training is as a laboratory phonologist working with Romance Languages. She studies phonetics, phonology and sociolinguistics, with particular interest in speech perception and dialectal accommodation. Most recently, Jessica has researched native-speaker perception of European Portuguese vowels and marginal contrasts.

In addition to her research and teaching background, Jessica worked as a medical interpreter here in Athens for six years. 

She also has served as assistant director of the University of Arizona's study abroad program in Valladolid, Spain.