Joanna Bialek:
Joanna Bialek Ph.D. (2016) is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the project ‘Tibetan Obsolete Mortuary practices and afterlife Beliefs’ (TOMB) at Trinity College Dublin. She is working at the crossroads of historical linguistics and religious studies. She has published Compounds and Compounding in Old Tibetan and A Textbook in Classical Tibetan, as well as articles on Old Tibetan, history of the Tibetan Empire, Dunhuang manuscripts, and funerary practices on the Tibetan Plateau.
https://tcd.academia.edu/JoannaBialek
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8542-4272
Timotheus Bodt:
Prof. Tim Bodt has recently been appointed as Associate Professor in Asian Studies at the School of Linguistic, Speech and Communication Sciences. He is also the Principal Investigator of the ERC project Lo-Rig, which will describe two languages of Bhutan, Gongduk and Monpa. While Dr. Bodt's research career centres on the documentation, description, and revitalisation of endangered languages of the Himalayan region; he also has a keen interest in their historical development.
Nathan Hill:
Nathan Hill holds a PhD in Tibetology from Harvard University and is currently serving as the Head of School of the School of Speech, Linguistic and Communication Sciences at TCD. He is also the director of the Trinity Centre for Asian Studies.
Professor Hill researches Tibeto-Burman/Sino-Tibetan historical linguistics. He has published on Old Tibetan descriptive linguistics, Tibetan corpus linguistics, Tibeto-Burman reconstruction and comparative linguistics, the history of Chinese, and the typology of evidential systems. He has led research projects funded by the European Research Council, the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the British Academy.
His books include The Historical Phonology of Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese (2019), A Lexicon of Tibetan Verb Stems as Reported by the Grammatical Tradition (2010), and Old Tibetan Inscriptions, co-authored with Kazushi Iwao (2009). His edited books include Evidential Systems of Tibetan Languages, with Lauren Gawne (2017).
https://tcd.academia.edu/NathanWHill
Kazue Iwasa:
Kazue Iwasa holds a PhD in Literature from Kobe City University of Foreign Studies. She is Associate Professor at School of Foreign Languages, Department of Chinese Studies, Nagoya University of Foreign Studies. She has researched Yi manuscripts and Yi scripts, and also has carried out fieldwork on Modern Yi dialects.Her details and research data are as follows:
https://researchmap.jp/getty/?lang=english
Shuya Zhang:
Shuya Zhang holds a PhD from the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO), France, and is currently an Associate Professor (tenure-track) at the School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She has published on Gyalrongic and Tangut descriptive linguistics, typology, Sino-Tibetan historical linguistics and Gyalrongic ethnobotanic and kinship studies. Dr Zhang has been awarded a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science postdoctoral fellowship and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellowship, and she currently leads a National Social Science Fund of China project “Dialectal Survey and Historical Evolution of Situ Gyalrong.”
https://sjtu.academia.edu/zhangshuya
Yunfan Lai:
Lai Yunfan is Nanyang Assistant Professor in the Division of Linguistics & Multilingual Studies at Nanyang Technological University, specialising in historical and typological linguistics of the Sino-Tibetan family, particularly Gyalrongic languages.
His work focuses on endangered language documentation, proto-language reconstruction and language subgrouping, using both the traditional Neogrammarian method and innovative computational tools. He has published extensively on Gyalrongic and Sino-Tibetan historical linguistics, and supervises research on Sino-Tibetan subgrouping and phonological reconstruction using interdisciplinary methods.
Yue Ji:
Yue Ji is a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna and a recipient of a DOC Fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His doctoral project, The Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā in Tangut Translation, examines a Tangut manuscript in comparison with its parallel texts in Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Chinese. Grounded in the philological studies, his research focuses on Tangut linguistics from both descriptive and historical perspectives, and he is also preparing an introductory grammar of the Tangut language. Furthermore, his interests extend to Chinese historical linguistics, Buddhist philology, Indo-European linguistics, and Central Asian studies.
Josiah Medin:
Josiah Medin is a PhD candidate in the Trinity Centre for Asian Studies funded by a Trinity Research Doctorate Award. His project, entitled A Descriptive Grammar of the Old Meitei Language as Attested in the Numit Kappa and the Cheitharol Kumpapa, concerns the description of the linguistic features of the oldest attested stage of the Meitei language of Manipur, Northeast India, and of the changes that the language underwent in its development into its modern form. His research combines descriptive linguistics, historical phonology, morphology, syntax, palaeography, epigraphy, and textual criticism to date and describe the contents of manuscripts and inscriptions from pre-colonial Manipur.
https://tcd.academia.edu/JosiahMedin
Facts and Figures
Location:
Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Start Date:
Monday, June 15, 2026
Duration:
June 15th-27th
Level:
Open to all
Areas of Interest:
Historical Linguistics, Descriptive Linguistics, Linguistic Anthropology, Palaeography, Religious Studies, Buddhist Studies, (Asian) History, Ancient Literature
Contact:
ssath@tcd.ie