Tessa Scott, PhD
she/they
ARCS Project Coordinator
Office for Faculty Equity & Welfare
UC Berkeley
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I currently work full-time as a Project Coordinator in the Office for Faculty Equity & Welfare at UC Berkeley, where I collaborate with faculty, staff, and students on projects that primarily support the academic advancement and career success of faculty. With various teams, I research best practices, develop program content, implement programs (including event planning, hosting, and financial management), and evaluate their effectiveness.
I previously held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Future of Higher Education program at UC Berkeley in 2023 – 2024. I received my PhD in linguistics from UC Berkeley Department of Linguistics in Spring 2023. My degree is supplemented with a Designated Emphasis in Indigenous Language Revitalization. My dissertation is accessible here.
Mam Language Revitalization
My linguistic work is ongoing and primarily focuses on Mam (Mayan) language revitalization and maintenance through creating learning materials on language and culture in a US diaspora community. With Silvia Carrillo Godinez, a Mam language teacher in Guatemala, and Cristina Méndez, a UC Berkeley PhD candidate, we are currently focusing on creating digital learning materials for learners. Visit our website for more information.
Recent work:
2025. Learn Mam with Sophia: Story-Based Language Learning. Indigenous Language Institute Symposium Language Research Showcase. With Silvia Lucrecia Carillo Godinez and Cristina Mendez. [abstract] [poster] [website]
2024. Dinámicas de traducción: colaboración en el idioma Mam. Talk at FAMLi7. Mexico City, Mexico. With Silvia Lucrecia Carillo Godinez and Cristina Mendez. [slides]
Featured in the news:
BBC. The Mayan Languages Spreading Across the US (May 2025)
UC Berkeley Social Sciences Matrix. Language Revitalization in Oakland: A Visual Interview with Tessa Scott (August 2023)
UC Berkeley News. Keeping alive our Indigenous cultures on Mother Language Day. (February 2022)
The New Yorker: A translation Crisis at the border. (January 2020)
Syntax, Semantics, Morphology
My interests in theoretical linguistics are in generative syntax and morphology. My dissertation research aims to understand the nature of person features, pronominal syntax, and pronominal spell out in Mam.
Recent work:
2025. Formalizing two types of A/Ā movement. Berkeley Papers in Formal Linguistics, 4(1) https://doi.org/10.5070/BF2.54001 Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4vc1z6w2
2024-5. Severing verbs from their arguments: Directionals and argument structure in Mam. With Noah Elkins and Justin Royer.
2024-5. Super-extended ergativity in Mam. With Noah Elkins and Justin Royer.
2023. Pronouns and Agreement in San Juan Atitán Mam. UC Berkeley Doctoral Dissertation. [dissertation] [defense]
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