Norquest attended the University of Arizona's Joint PhD program in Anthropology and Linguistics,^[2] where he studied under Jane H. Hill and Diana B. Archangeli. As part of his doctoral research, he participated in a Fulbright fellowship in Hainan, China from 2003 to 2004, where he collected field data on various Hlai languages such as Nadou.^[3] In 2007, he completed his doctoral dissertation on the reconstruction of Proto-Hlai.^[4]

After obtaining his Ph.D. in 2007, Norquest was employed as a postdoctoral researcher under J. Stephen Lansing at the University of Arizona, where he worked on quantitative comparative-historical linguistic reconstruction methods^[5] and on the Austronesian languages of Nusa Tenggara.^[6]

From 2015 to 2016, Norquest was the principal investigator of Reconstructing Language Change and Variation, a National Science Foundation project that aims to provide a revised reconstruction of Proto-Kam–Sui.^[7]

Norquest is currently working on a reconstruction of Proto-Kra–Dai. Parts of his reconstructions have been published in Norquest (2020, 2021).^[8][9]

• Norquest, Peter (2015). A Phonological Reconstruction of Proto-Hlai. Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004300521. hdl:10150/194203. ISBN 978-90-04-30052-1.
• Norquest, Peter (2021). "Classification of (Tai-)Kadai/Kra-Dai languages". The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia. De Gruyter. pp. 225–246. doi:10.1515/9783110558142-013. ISBN 9783110558142. S2CID 238672319.

• Norquest, Peter (2020). A Hypothesis on the Origin of Preglottalized Sonorants in Kra-Dai. 38th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Vancouver: Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia. doi:10.14288/1.0389866
• Norquest, Peter (2016). "Revisiting the question of Austronesian implosives". Mother Tongue. 20 (In Memory of Harold Crane Fleming (1926-2015)).
• Norquest, Peter (2013). "A Revised Inventory of Proto Austronesian Consonants: Kra-Dai and Austroasiatic Evidence" (PDF). Mon-Khmer Studies. 42: 102–126.
• Tumonggor, Meryanne K; Karafet, Tatiana M; Downey, Sean; Lansing, J Stephen; Norquest, Peter; Sudoyo, Herawati; Hammer, Michael F; Cox, Murray P (2014). "Isolation, contact and social behavior shaped genetic diversity in West Timor". Journal of Human Genetics. 59 (9). Springer Science and Business Media LLC: 494–503. doi:10.1038/jhg.2014.62. ISSN 1434-5161. PMC 4521296. PMID 25078354.
• Downey, Sean S.; Hallmark, Brian; Cox, Murray P.; Norquest, Peter; Lansing, J. Stephen (2008). "Computational Feature-Sensitive Reconstruction of Language Relationships: Developing the ALINE Distance for Comparative Historical Linguistic Reconstruction". Journal of Quantitative Linguistics. 15 (4). Informa UK Limited: 340–369. doi:10.1080/09296170802326681. ISSN 0929-6174. S2CID 4849552.
• Norquest, Peter (2005). "Word structure in Chamic: prosodic alignment versus segmental faithfulness". In Grant, A. and Sidwell, P. editors, Chamic and Beyond: Studies in mainland Austronesian languages. PL-569:147-188. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University. doi:10.15144/PL-569.147
• Norquest, Peter (1998). "Greenberg's Visit to Arizona". Mother Tongue Newsletter 31:25f.

• Jerold A. Edmondson
• Li Fang-Kuei

• Peter Norquest on ResearchGate
• Peter Norquest on Academia.edu
• Reconstruction of Proto Kam-Sui by Peter Norquest, hosted at the SEAlang Library (CC BY 4.0 license)