About

TRICL was founded in 2015 by Yankee Modi and Mark W. Post as an attempt to address ongoing concerns around language change, loss, and endangerment in the Eastern Himalayan region - ethnically and linguistically, one of the richest and most diverse areas in the Asian mainland.

We recognize that most of the work that is required to document, conserve and develop resources for Eastern Himalayan languages - most of which are spoken by small groups of between a few hundred and a few thousand individuals - is not often economically lucrative. Such work is traditionally carried out by university researchers; however, university jobs are scarce, particularly in the Eastern Himalayan region, and university researchers are often so bogged down by teaching and administration that they end up doing much less fundamental documentation and other language and culture research than they might hope to.

On the other hand, there exist large numbers of interested, capable, and often highly skilled community members throughout the Eastern Himalayan region, who, if they could only access the necessary resources and support, would be able to carry out much of the work associated with language and cultural documentation outside of an academic-institutional context.

The aim of TRICL is to build such a resources-and-support network, by convening occasional Workshops, bringing in local, regional and international scholar-trainers, obtaining much-needed resources, and providing ongoing support for Indigenous community language workers in the Eastern Himalayan region.

TRICL is extremely fortunate to have been supported since its founding in 2015 by the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research.