About us

Guillem Belmar Viernes: I am a PhD student of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I am interested in processes of revitalization and reclamation for Indigenous and minoritized languages, especially in the Americas, the Pacific, and Europe. I'm currently focusing on documentation and community work with Mixtepec Mixtec, as well as other Mixtec languages spoken in California, and P'urhépecha.

Mykel Loren Brinkerhoff: I am a PhD student of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I am interested in questions concerning phonology and its interactions with other components of grammar. I am particularly interested in how these interfaces manifest themselves in indigenous languages of the Americas and languages of the Germanic and Celtic families. I'm currently involved with documenting the phonology of and exploring the interactions of tone and phonation in Santiago Laxopa Zapotec.

Eric W. Campbell: I am Associate Professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and my work involves typological, functional, and community-based approaches to language documentation, linguistic structure, and language change, especially with speakers of P'urhépecha and Otomanguean languages spoken in Mexico and California.

Hilaria Cruz: I am a linguist and speaker from San Juan Quiahije Eastern Chatino. I am an Assistant professor of Linguistics and Native American Religion in the Department of Comparative Humanities at the University of Louisville. I have been collaborating with linguists and computer scientists to create linguistic and technological tools to automate and advance the documentation, analysis, and promotion of endangered languages. I am equally passionate about creating print and digital media for indigenous audiences; in collaboration with my students, I have published 14 children's books in the Chatino language.

Raúl Diaz Robles: Soy de la comunidad de Santiago Laxopa Ixtlán de Juárez, Oaxaca. Estudié musica en México y mi primera lengua es el Zapoteco. Llegué a Santa Cruz, California hace 2 años, estoy trabajando con una organización llamada Senderos. Estoy dando clases de música y tambien estoy estudiando Inglés.

John Duff: I am a PhD candidate in linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I study the processing and representation of linguistic meaning as a psycholinguist and semanticist. As part of that work, I am invested in long-term collaborations with speakers of Santiago Laxopa Zapotec on the description, teaching, and formal analysis of the language.

Martín Gabriel Ruiz: I am a primary school teacher who has worked at schools in P'urhépecha communities since 1992. I worked at the Universidad Pedagógica de Michoacán as an academic advisor. More recently I've worked as a community organizer for MICOP working on the distribution of information on the COVID-19 vaccine and work-place safety in Ventura County, CA. I have been leading the P'urhépecha project at UCSB since 2020.

Delaney Gomez-Jackson: I am a Master's student of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. My research interests include syntax, semantics, and their interface, empirically focusing on Santiago Laxopa Zapotec (Otomanguean). Specifically, my research is centered on questions and focus in Santiago Laxopa Zapotec. Broadly, I am interested in community-based approaches to language documentation and revitalization.

Andrew Hedding: I am currently an acting assistant professor at the University of Washington. Since 2017, I have done fieldwork with speakers of Tu’un Nda’vi, both in California and in Mexico. My theoretical research primarily investigates the syntax of the language, with a special focus on the ways that surrounding discourse affects word order.

Matthew Kogan: I am a Master’s student in Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I am interested in psycholinguistics and syntax, and the incorporation of understudied languages in these fields. With Nido de Lenguas, I helped develop an online memory game for practicing the lexical tones of Santiago Laxopa Zapotec, and I co-organize community and language oriented outreach events in the Santa Cruz area.

Jeremías Salazar: I am a Mixteco language activist. In 2009 I started working on my own language collaborating with San José State and in 2019 I started a collaboration with UCSB. I have worked for Food and Water Watch, as well as for MICOP as a labor rights advocate. Now I am more interested in language work and working as a translator and interpreter.

Fe Silva Robles: Fe is the co-founder of Senderos, serving as the Artistic/Program Director in a volunteer position. Fe is an Indigenous woman from Santiago Laxopa, a village in the Sierra Norte mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico, and she grew up speaking Zapotec. Fe earned a degree as an elementary teacher with a minor in dance in Mexico. She learned Spanish in elementary school and learned English at 36 years of age when she moved to the USA. Along with her sister Nereida, Fe started these artistic activities in 2001 after seeing that Latino immigrant youth and their families have huge challenges in staying connected to their culture. Fe is retired from her long-time position as a bilingual School/Community Coordinator with Santa Cruz City Schools. Fe serves on the County Latino Affairs Commission, the County Rise Together Racial Equity Coalition, teaches Zapotec at UC Santa Cruz, and maintains close relationships in Oaxaca to support the cultural arts movement she has created in California.

Giorgia Troiani: I am a PhD candidate at UCSB Linguistics working on discourse and grammar. I am interested in reported and reconstructed discourse, as well as in spoken corpus design. I am currently collaborating to the design of a corpus of spoken Kazakh. I believe researchers have the responsibility to share their knowledge with the general public. In the years, I have taught and made accessible online workshops about spoken data recording and transcription.

Adrienne Tsikewa: (Zuni Pueblo) I am a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I have served as the convenor for the Native4Linguistics Special Interest Group (under the Linguistic Society of America) from 2019 to 2022, and I am also a current co-convenor of the CoLang Advisory Circle. I am interested, among other things, in language reclamation, Indigenous research methodologies and Indigenous data sovereignty.

Maya Wax Cavallaro: I am a linguistics PhD student at UC Santa Cruz. My research deals with phonetics and phonological features and typology, with a focus on languages of Mesoamerica. I am interested in community-based research and language revitalization and have recently been working with speakers and teachers of Santiago Laxopa Zapotec and Tz'utujil (Mayan).

Dingyan Zhou: I am Dingyan Zhou majoring in English language and linguistics in Fudan University. I was an exchange student at UCSB when I joined the project. I am interested in language revitalization, sociocultural linguistics, and phonetics.