Stephanie Witkowski

Stephanie Witkowski is the Executive Director of 7000 Languages and has over 10 years of experience in both language revitalization and the non-profit sector. She holds an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa with an emphasis in Language Documentation and Conservation, and has worked with speakers of multiple under documented languages, including native languages of California, the Pacific, and Russia.

Mosiah Bluecloud

Mosiah Bluecloud, member of the Kickapoo tribe of Oklahoma, began working in Indigenous Language Revitalization in 2008. After 1,280 hours of learning Sauk as an Apprentice and 668 hours of professional development training in Native Language Teaching Methodologies, Mosiah became the Lead instructor of the Sauk Language. He taught community classes across three counties, a Sauk Language course at Bacone College, and two levels of Sauk at Shawnee Highschool. He received his B.A in Linguistics Spring 2016, his Masters in Native American languages and Linguistics in Spring 2020 and is now starting his third year in the Linguistics PhD program.

Kayleigh Jeannette

Kayleigh Jeannette is a Project Coordinator at 7000 Languages and has an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from Boston University. Her research there focused on language documentation and revitalization in endangered and dormant language contexts. She is also TEFL certified and enjoys teaching English to international students. Throughout her work her goal is to use linguistics to support the individuals and communities around her.

Zeynep Burak

Zeynep Burak is a final-year linguistics student at Boğaziçi University in Turkey. She is Laz and a heritage speaker of the critically endangered Lazuri language and has worked with researchers from around the world as well as Indigenous language societies to preserve and nurture the multilingual environment of Turkey including the TADnet (Endangered Languages Network) and “Network of Laz and Circassian Civil Societies” funded by the Delegation of the European Union.

Marilyn James

Marilyn James (MEd, SFU), was Spokesperson for the Sinixt Nation in the Canadian portion of her people’s traditional territory for over 25 years. She continues to be active as an elder in upholding responsibilities for protocols and laws in Sinixt təmxʷúlaʔxʷ (territory) under Sinixt smumiem law. She developed curriculum currently being used in BC School Districts and on the provincial web platform. She is the co-author of “Not Extinct: Keeping the Sinixt Way” (Maa Press, 2018, 2021) and “Border Crossed: Sinixt Identity, Place, and Belonging in the Borderlands” (The Line Crossed Us. Athabasca University Press, 2022).

K.L. Kivi

K.L. Kivi is a queer settler (Mulk/Estonian), rural grassroots activist. K.L. is the author of 8 books in a variety of genres. They reside in the Sinixt tmxwúlaʔxw (homeland) in BC where they coordinate the Blood of Life project, the Sinixt-settler artistic collaboration designed to bring about Sinixt resurgence in the face of bureaucratic genocide. Through their company, Maa Press, they published “Not Extinct: Keeping the Sinixt Way” by Marilyn James and Taress Alexis, now in its 2nd edition.

Taress Alexis

Taress Alexis is a Sinixt knowledge keeper, and an Aboriginal Support worker and teaching consultant in British Columbia, Canada. Taress delivers cultural education to communities, corporations and museums following Sinixt cultural protocols. Taress is also an accomplished story teller and educator delivering culturally appropriate materials to school-aged children through story and craft. She is currently a full-time student of the Interior Salish language. Taress is also a founding member of the Blood of Life Collective, a Sinixt-settler collective working for Sinixt resurgence. Taress is co-author of “Not Extinct: Keeping the Sinixt Way” (Maa Press, 2018, 2021).

Aidan Pine

Hello! My name is Aidan Pine. I’m a settler of European ancestry born in Victoria, B.C, Canada. I am a researcher working on the Indigenous Language Technology project at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), and I fell in love with language revitalization work as a way of combining my interests in language, linguistics, anti-colonial/decolonial methodologies, and computer science. I am really excited to share ReadAlong Studio and to see all the read-alongs everybody will make!

Eric Joanis

Bonjour! My name is Eric Joanis. I am a computational linguist and software developer at the NRC. I have spent most of my career working on statistical machine translation, but shifted in recent years to supporting projects in the area of Indigenous language revitalization. I am interested in applying my software development expertise to projects that are anchored in community needs and making them robust, stable and well documented, as well as contributing to their core feature development.

Marc Tessier

Bonjour / Hi, I’m Marc Tessier. I was born in Chilliwack BC. and lived in many Canadian provinces and territories in my younger years. I now live in the National Capital Region. Throughout my career now at NRC, I have been working with, supported and developed various language technology tools.

David Huggins-Daines

Hi! I’m David, originally from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, but I’ve wandered around a bit since and ended up in a small town north of Montreal, where I am an elected city councillor. Previously, I worked for many years in industry on automatic speech recognition, question answering, and other natural language processing technologies. It has been said that learning, speaking, writing, and teaching a language is a political act, but it is also a profoundly human one. My goal is to make simple, useful technologies that empower as many people to do this for as many languages as possible.

Patrick Littell

Hello; my name is Patrick Littell; I’m a researcher at the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa, ON. I concentrate on lowering the prerequisites (in terms of both data and expertise) for language technology development, so that more people can make practical real-world technologies for their languages.

Delasie Torkornoo

Hello! My name is Delasie (Del) Torkornoo . I am originally from Ghana. I am the technical director for the Algonquian Dictionaries and Language Resources Project (https://www.algonquianlanguages.ca). I have a passion for developing, adapting and promoting digital infrastructure for community focused language projects. I am enjoy building tools to simplify and support the processes of language documentation and dissemination at the community level.

Sai Bhatawadekar

Sai Bhatawadekar is an Associate Professor of Hindi-Urdu, and also a choreographer and theater director, with developing skills in digital documentary making and editing. Her language teaching philosophy and practice is creative and multidisciplinary at its core, and project- and performance-based, in which her students create their own art, poetry, theater and dance, and short films in the process of language learning.

Larry Kimura

Dr. Larry L. Kimura is an Associate Professor of Hawaiian Language at Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaii Hilo. He is a Co-Principal Investigator for the Kaniʻāina: Voices of the Land Spoken Hawaiian Language Repository. Dr. Kimura is the first President and Co-Founder of Hawaiʻi’s first Pūnana Leo Hawaiian language medium preschools that started Hawaiʻi’s Hawaiian Language Immersion Education Program in 1987. He serves as the Chairperson of the Hawaiian Lexicon (new Hawaiian words), which focuses on Hawaiian curriculum development and teacher licensing for Hawaiʻi’s DOE K-12 Hawaiian Medium Programs.

Kauāakeakua Segundo

A graduate of the Kamehameha Schoolʻs Maui Campus, Kauāakeakua Segundo is seeking his second bachelors in Hawaiian Studies at Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani, the University of Hawaiʻiʻs College of Hawaiian Language. He is a student archivist for Kaniʻāina: Voices of the Land Spoken Hawaiian Language Repository and serves as the Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlaniʻs student government representative.

Bruce Torres Fischer

Bruce Torres Fischer is the lead archivist for the Kaniʻāina: Voices of the Land Spoken Hawaiian Language Repository, an NSF and NEH funded preservation and access project for native Hawaiian speech. He is also a Master’s Student in Hawaiian Language and Literature at Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaii Hilo, and enjoys producing educational digital content about the Hawaiian language and culture through various platforms.

Kaʻawaloa Kauaula

A graduate of Hawaiʻis first kindergarten to twelve grade Hawaiian Language immersion school, Ke Kula Kaiapuni ʻo Ānuenue, Kaʻawaloa Kauaula is currently pursuing her masters degree in Hawaiian Language and Literature at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hiloʻs College of Hawaiian Language, Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani. She is also a student archivist for the Kaniʻāina: Voices of the Land Spoken Hawaiian Language Repository and serves as a Hawaiian Language tutor for the UH Hiloʻs Kīpuka Native Hawaiian Student Center.

Scott Saft

Scott Saft is the chair of graduate programs in the Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian language at UH-Hilo and the coordinator of the doctoral program titled “Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization.” His role in this session is convener and to promote discussion among the participants.

Erin Griffin

Erin Griffin is a Ph.D. student in the Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization Program in the Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian language at UH-Hilo. She works as a program officer for Indigenous education at the American Indian College fund and focuses her work especially on the Dakota language and culture.

Haunani Keamo

Haunani Keamo is a Ph.D student in the Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization Program in the Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian language at UH-Hilo. She teaches math at the Hawaiian medium school Nāwahīokalaniʻopuʻu on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi and is focusing her Ph.D. research on indigenous approaches to mathematics education.

Sebastian Ohara-Saft

Sebastian Ohara-Saft is Ph.D. student in the Linguistics Program at UH-Mānoa with a focus on language documentation and preservation. His documentation work focuses on the Jejueo language, the indigenous language of Jeju Island off the coast of South Korea.

Jacob Hakim

Jacob Hakim is a Ph.D. student in the Linguistics Program at UH-Mānoa with a focus on language documentation and preservation. His documentation work focuses on Indonesian languages, particularly the Nasal language spoken on the island of Sumatra.

Koutaro Yuuji

Kotaro Yuuji is a Ph.D student in the Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization Program in the Ka Haka ʻUla o Keʻelikōlani College of Hawaiian language at UH-Hilo. He is heavily involved in language activism in the Ryukyuan Islands for the language of Uchinaaguchi.

Julia Sallabank

Julia Sallabank is Professor of Language Policy and Revitalisation at SOAS, University of London, UK. Her language revitalisation work started with her heritage language, Guernesiais, in 2000, and spread worldwide. She teaches language documentation and revitalization, sociolinguistics, and language policy and planning at SOAS. Her recent publications include: Revitalizing Endangered Languages: A Practical Guide, co-edited with Justyna Olko (CUP 2021, free open access); Attitudes to Endangered Languages (2013) and, with Peter Austin, Endangered Languages: Beliefs and Ideologies (2014) and the Cambridge Handbook of Endangered Languages (2011).

Vasiliki Vita

Vasiliki Vita is an Onassis Scholar and postgraduate researcher in Linguistics at SOAS, University of London. Her project uses Participatory Action Research to test ESL methods for teaching Sonsorolese. It is a documentation project with maintenance in mind. She currently works as a Research Assistant with Julia Sallabank’s project “Language Revitalisation: From Practice to Theory” at SOAS, University of London, and as a Micro-Internship Experience Officer with Learning Connected and SOAS Enterprise. She has volunteered and worked with various initiatives focusing on endangered/Indigenous/minoritized languages, language revitalization and COVID-19, including virALLanguages and the Endangered Languages Project. Her academic interests include language documentation and description with revitalisation and maintenance in mind, as well as applied linguistics in general.

Racquel-María Sapién

Racquel-María Sapién is the current Editor of Language Documentation & Conservation (LD&C). She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma (OU). Since 2004, she has ​​worked in collaboration with members of Kari’nja (Cariban) and Lokono (Arawakan) communities in Suriname to document, analyze, and support the reclamation of these and other languages.

Cedar Lay

Cedar is a PhD student of linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa currently serving as the Web Production Editor of LD&C. His research focuses primarily on community-based language documentation and digital approaches to language revitalization efforts. 

Andrea Berez-Kroeker

Andrea Berez-Kroeker is a past Technology Section Editor of LD&C and is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She has partnered with communities in North America and the Pacific to facilitate language work, and she is broadly interested in methods for preserving and mobilizing language materials.

Bradley McDonnell

Bradley McDonnell is the current Technology and Book Review Editor. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He has been involved in language work in several communities in western Indonesia for over a decade.

Rui Yamawaki

Rui is a PhD student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and has served as the copy-editor of LD&C for two years now. Her work and research interests fall within the Language Documentation and Preservation track with a specific focus on the Rarámuri language in northern Mexico.