International Symposium on Research and Teaching of Endangered

and Marginalized Languages in East and Southeast Asia

Speaker Biographies
Min Zhou is Distinguished Professor of Sociology & Asian American Studies, Walter and Shirley Wang
Endowed Chair in U.S.-China Relations & Communications, and Director of the UCLA Asia Pacific
Center. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is an internationally renowned scholar in the areas of migration and
development, race and ethnicity, urban sociology, Chinese diaspora, and the sociology of Asia and Asian
America, and has published widely in these areas. She is the author of Chinatown: The Socioeconomic
Potential of an Urban Enclave (1992), Contemporary Chinese America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and
Community Transformation (2009), and The Accidental Sociologist in Asian American Studies (2011);
co-author of Growing up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States (with
Bankston, 1998), The Asian American Achievement Paradox (with Lee, 2015), and The Rise of the New
Second Generation (with Bankston, 2016); and editor of Contemporary Chinese Diasporas (2017), and
co-editor of Contemporary Asian America (with Ocampo and Gatewood, 2016) and Beyond Economic
Migration: Social, Historical, and Political Factors in US Immigration (2023).

Shoichi Iwasaki is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. His book
publications include Subjectivity in Grammar and Discourse: Theoretical considerations and a case study
of Japanese spoken discourse (Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993), Japanese – Revised edition (John
Benjamin Publishing Company, 2013) and A Reference Grammar of Thai (Cambridge University Press,
2005), as well as multiple edited volumes. More recently he co-authored Basic Okinawan: From
Conversation to Grammar (University of Hawai‘i Press) with Rumiko Shinzato and Ikema Dictionary
(NINJAL) with HiroyukNakam, Yukinori Takubo and others.

Yanti is an Associate Professor and the Head of Pusat Kajian Bahasa dan Budaya ‘Center for Language
and Culture Studies’ at Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics
from the University of Delaware. Her research interests include Malayic languages, phonology,
morphology, syntax, sociolinguistics, language description and documentation.

Elizabeth Zeitoun is Research Fellow at the Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica. Her major
research interests lie in Austronesian linguistics, morphosyntax, typology, historical linguistics. She is
specialized in Rukai, Saisiyat, Tsou and has worked on many other Formosan languages (among other
Pazeh-Kaxabu, Bunun, Thao, Kanakanavu and Saaroa). She has published a number of sketch grammars
in Chinese, and two major monographs on Rukai and Saisiyat. She has been Acting Editor and later
Executive Editor of Language and Linguistics from April 2008 through June 2013 and is one of the
editors of the Handbook of Formosan languages: The indigenous languages of Taiwan (Brill).

Jennifer Chan is Scholarly Communication Librarian at UCLA and liaises with campus partners on the
development of targeted outreach and programming that promote scholarly communication, open access
and open education strategies to further the campus mission of research, teaching and public service. She
administers UCLA Library’s Affordable Course Materials Initiative, which seeks to more closely align
Library collections, services and expertise with instructional needs. ACMI has helped lower the cost of
course materials for thousands of UCLA students while achieving instructors’ educational objectives.
Jennifer has multiple certifications related to United States copyright law.

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Seng-hian Lau, an Associate Professor at National Taiwan Normal University, formerly worked in a
securities firm, an electronics company, and a magazine publisher. Concerned about the endangerment of
the Taiwanese language, he joined non-profit language revitalization organizations and edited Taiwanese
publications. He also actively engaged in Taiwanese creative writing and published novellas. Lau's
expertise extends beyond academic papers on Taiwanese syntax, encompassing popular books on
Taiwanese grammar. He has authored two books for general readers and an English book for learning
Taiwanese. Currently, he leads a team developing the first gamified Taiwanese learning website.
Nala H. Lee is an Associate Professor of linguistics at the National University of Singapore. Her research
focuses on the extreme consequences of language change brought about by language contact, including
the birth of contact languages as well as the endangerment and demise of languages, and the perspectives
she takes on these issues are both sociolinguistic and structural in nature. More generally, she is interested
in how language vitality is measured, and is a co-developer of the Language Endangerment Index which
is used on the Endangered Languages Project portal (www.endangeredlanguages.com). Locally in
Singapore, she works with the Chinese Peranakans on documenting and describing their language, Baba
Malay.

William O’Grady is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
He has long been committed to the revitalization of Jejueo, the critically endangered language still spoken
by elderly residents of Korea’s Jeju Island. In addition to co-authoring a book on the language (with
Sejung Yang and Changyong Yang), he has written a number of articles on the strategies that are most
likely to help maintain and restore the intergenerational transmission of endangered languages. More
recently, he has begun to investigate the non-linguistic factors that contribute to the decline of languages,
ranging from the oppressive policies of national governments to the prejudices of powerful individuals.
Sejung Yang is a language activist and linguist in the Jejueo community on Jeju Island, South Korea.
She earned her Ph.D. degree in linguistics from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her dissertation
compared the Jejueo and English language abilities of Jeju residents in different age groups. She
co-authored the book “Jejueo: The Language of Korea’s Jeju Island” with Changyong Yang and William
O’Grady. Currently, she works for the Institute for Humanities at Jeju National University. Her research
interests include endangered language education, language revitalization, cultural revival, cultural and
linguistic identity, language policies and planning, endangered language orthography, and the integration
of language documentation with pedagogical material development.
Masahiro Yamada is an Associate Professor at National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
(NINJAL), and the principal investigator of NINJAL’s one of the seven collaborative projects “Research
on the Conservation of Endangered Languages” (“Endangered Languages”) project. He received his
Ph.D. in Linguistics from University of Delaware in 2010.

Akiko Yokoyama is an Assistant Professor of National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics.
She received her Ph.D in social science from Hitotsubadhi University in Japan. She has involved in
language description, documentation, and revitalization work in Okinoerabu, Ryukyuan.
Sumittra Suraratdecha works at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia (RILCA),
Mahidol University, Thailand, focusing on the preservation of endangered and marginalized languages in
East and Southeast Asia. She earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Hawaii at Manoa,
where she also explored Second Language Studies. This background has informed her sociolinguistic
approach to language education, particularly in Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education
(MTB-MLE) and second language acquisition for marginalized ethnic and migrant communities. Dr.
Sumittra's research emphasizes community engagement and empowerment, involving extensive

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collaboration with ethnic groups in Thailand, the People's Republic of China, and Japan. Through her
efforts, she seeks to support these communities in reclaiming, revitalizing, and preserving their languages,
fostering a greater appreciation for the richness of linguistic and cultural diversity in the region.
Chaak Ming Lau is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Modern Language
Studies at The Education University of Hong Kong. He has launched several language resource projects,
including the dictionary project words.hk, the Hambaanglaang story project, and TypeDuck, a phonemic
keyboard offering translation prompts for learners. He is also actively involved in resource construction
and promotional efforts of Waitau and Hakka, both endangered indigenous varieties spoken in Hong
Kong. Recent projects include a story compilation accompanied by language learning materials, and a
text-to-speech engine under development. He is the Vice President of the Linguistic Society of Hong
Kong and the Association for Conservation of Hong Kong Indigenous Languages.
Yukinori Takubo served as the Director-General of the National Institute for Japanese Language and
Linguistics (NINJAL) from October 2017 to March 2023, and currently holds the position of Professor
Emeritus at NINJAL and Kyoto University. He is also an invited professor at NINJAL. He received his D.
Lit. in linguistics from Kyoto University.

Randy J. LaPolla (PhD in Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley), now retired, was a Professor
in the Center for Language Sciences, Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences,
Beijing Normal University, Zhuhai Campus, China (2021-2023); Professor of Linguistics at Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore (2012-2021); Chair Professor of Linguistics at La Trobe University,
Melbourne, Australia (2004-2012) and Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at La
Trobe 2008-2010. Before moving to Australia he worked at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan (1990-1998)
and City University of Hong Kong (1996-2004). He was selected by the Ministry of Education of the
PRC to be a Cheung Kong Scholar (2005-2008), and he was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy
for the Humanities in 2008, and President of the Australian Linguistic Society for 2007-2009. He was
elected Honorary Member of the Philippine Linguistics Society in 2008, and Lifetime Member (Eminent
Scholarship) of the Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics in 2016. His research started with a
focus on the history and typology of Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian languages but expanded to issues
related to the nature of communicative behaviour and functional explanations for the patterns found in
human behaviour generally and the cognition that motivates it.
Juliana Wijaya is a lecturer at UCLA and teaches at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
(ALC). She established and expanded the Indonesian language program at UCLA. The courses she
teaches include introductory, intermediate and advanced Indonesian. Dr. Wijaya has done research,
presented and published in the fields of second and heritage language pedagogy and acquisition, discourse
analysis, and corpus linguistics. She received her BA in English from Petra Christian University,
Indonesia, her MA in linguistics from the University of Oregon, and PhD in applied linguistics from
UCLA. Currently Dr. Wijaya is the president of the Council of Teachers of Southeast Asian Languages,
and the Indonesian Studies Coordinator at the UCLA CSEAS.