Biography
I was born in the Netherlands, where I followed my primary and secondary education in my hometown of Arnhem. I have a life-long fascination for the Himalayan region, and in particular Bhutan, Tibet, Nepal and the adjacent areas of Northeast India. I also have a keen interest in nature, the outdoors, and farming. From 1997 to 2002, I lived in the university town of Wageningen in the Netherlands. I completed a Master of Science at Wageningen Agricultural University, specializing in Environmental Economics, but adding a second specialization in Social Forestry. I conducted research in Bhutan, assisted by my ever-increasing network of personal and professional contacts and my fluency in several of its languages. After my graduation in 2002, I taught Business Economics to Forestry and Nature Conservation students. In 2003-2004, aided by my knowledge of the Tibetan language and culture, I worked for a nature conservation and community development program in the Mount Everest region of Tibet, China. After a year, my disillusion with the meaningfulness of the interventions of the program in this socio-politically challenged environment brought me back to the other side of the Himalayas, where I worked for the Royal Society for the Protection of Nature in Bhutan and then as a lecturer in Environmental Studies at Bhutan's only undergraduate college, Sherubtse College in Kanglung, where I taught for two years and helped to design the Double Degree program. In 2008, I returned to Wageningen, where I worked for several years in Wageningen University. In 2012, I was offered a Swiss National Science Foundation-supported PhD position at Berne University in Switzerland by my long-time mentor and inspiration, Prof. (now Em.) Dr. George van Driem. I wrote a grammar of Duhumbi, an endangered language spoken by around 600 people in the Chug valley in the western part of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. I spent extended periods in Chug, learning the language in addition to describing it. I published an illustrated dictionary and a storybook, materials that will hopefully enable the Duhumbi to pass on their language to future generations. I successfully defended my dissertation in 2017 and published my grammar in 2020. In 2018, I moved to London to work at SOAS University of London on a Swiss National Science Foundation-supported postdoc to write a historical reconstruction of the hypothetical ancestor language, of Duhumbi and its seven sister languages, Proto-Western Kho-Bwa. This monograph was published by Academia Sinica in 2024. Between 2019 and 2024, I was based in London but spent extended periods in Nepal, where I worked with the independent Nepali researcher Uday Raj Aaley. We recorded the last two speakers of the unique isolate Kusunda language, Gyani Maiya and Kamala, only months before Gyani Maiya sadly passed away. Supported by the British Academy and several other donors, we have been working to transcribe, translate, and analyse those recordings, publish materials to revitalize the language, materials on the history and current situation of the Kusunda people and their language, and materials on the process of and limitations to revitalizing the language. In addition, Uday has been teaching Kusunda to children and adults again. We are also working to find out more about the Kusunda's position in the population and linguistic history of Asia. In 2024, I was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant to document and describe the endangered Gongduk and Mönpa languages of Bhutan and in particular their unique biactantial verbal agreement systems. The Lo-Rig project will also apply and further develop Automatic Speech Recognition for low-resource languages and produce materials for the revitalization of these two languages. The project is hosted at Trinity College Dublin, where I have been appointed as Associate Professor in Asian Studies.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Timotheus A. Bodt & Uday Raj Aaley, Decline of the Kusunda of Nepal., Asian Ethnology, 83, (2), 2024, p301 - 332
Timotheus A. Bodt, Lessons from the Duhumbi version of the epic of King Gesar of Ling., Proceedings of the 4th Vajray"na conference, Thimphu, Bhutan, October 1-4, 2022, 2024, 145, pp183
Timotheus A. Bodt & Uday Raj Aaley, Revival of the Kusunda identity in Nepal., Man in India, 104, (3&4), 2024, p241 - 272
Timotheus A. Bodt, Proto-Western Kho-Bwa: Reconstructing the past of a small indigenous community., Academia Sinica, 2024
Timotheus A. Bodt, East Bodish revisited., Bulletin of Tibetology, 54, (1), 2023, p49 - 212
Uday Raj Aaley & Timotheus A. Bodt, Speak to awaken: Revitalising Kusunda., Living Languages " Lenguas Vivas " Línguas Vivas, 2, (1), 2023
Timotheus A. Bodt, An integrated FLEx"ELAN workflow for linguistic analysis with multiple transcriptions and translations and multiple participants., Language Documentation and Conservation, 16, 2022, p417 - 452
Timotheus Adrianus Bodt & Johann-Mattis List, Reflex prediction: A case study of Western Kho-Bwa., Diachronica, 39, (1), 2022, p1 - 38
Neenan K, Reflective Meditation, International Symposium on Spiritual Care in Nursing, Spiritual Care Nursing Education to Embrace New Challenges in a Moving World,, University College Dublin, School of Nursing & Midwifery & Health Systems, 6th December , 2022, 2022, Prof Fiona Timmins, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems
Mei-Shin Wu, Timotheus A. Bodt, Tiago Tresoldi, Bayesian phylogenetics illuminate shallower relationships among Trans-Himalayan languages in the Tibet-Arunachal area, Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 2022
Bodt, T.A., The Duhumbi perspective on Proto-Western Kho-Bwa onsets, Journal of Historical Linguistics, 11, (1), 2021, p1-59
Timotheus A. Bodt, Sartang (West Kameng district, Arunachal Pradesh, India) " Language Contexts., Language Documentation and Description, 20, 2021, p162 - 188
Negation in Kho-Bwa: A typological comparison. in, editor(s)Norihiko Hayashi & Takumi Ikeda , Diversity of Negation. Grammatical Phenomena of Sino-Tibetan Languages 5, Kyoto, 2021, pp203 - 237, [Timotheus A. Bodt]
Timotheus A. Bodt, Grammar of Duhumbi., Leiden, Brill, 2020
Rzymski, C., Tresoldi, T., Greenhill, S.J., Wu, M.-S., Schweikhard, N.E., Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M., Gast, V., Bodt, T.A., Hantgan, A., Kaiping, G.A., Chang, S., Lai, Y., Morozova, N., Arjava, H., Hübler, N., Koile, E., Pepper, S., Proos, M., Van Epps, B., Blanco, I., Hundt, C., Monakhov, S., Pianykh, K., Ramesh, S., Gray, R.D., Forkel, R., List, J.-M., The Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications, reproducible analysis of cross-linguistic polysemies, Scientific Data, 7, (1), 2020
Wu, Mei-Shin; Schweikhard, Nathanael E.; Bodt, Timotheus A.; Hill, Nathan W.; List, Johann-Mattis, Computer-Assisted Language Comparison: State of the Art, Journal of Open Humanities Data, 6, (2), 2020, p1-14
Uday Raj Aaley & Timotheus A. Bodt, Languages of the World " Kusunda., Babel, The Language Magazine, (30), 2020, p40 - 42
Bodt, T., Expressives in Duhumbi, Brill's Studies in South and Southwest Asian Languages, 13, 2020, p278-299
Timotheus A. Bodt & Johann-Mattis List, Testing the predictive force of the comparative method: An ongoing experiment on unattested words in Western Kho-Bwa languages., Papers in Historical Phonology, 4, 2019, p22 - 44
Timotheus Bodt, The Duhumbi perspective on Proto-Western Kho-Bwa rhymes., Die Sprache, 52, (2), 2019, p141 - 176
Ismael Lieberherr & Timotheus Adrianus Bodt., Sub-grouping Kho-Bwa based on shared core vocabulary, Himalayan Linguistics, 16, (1), 2017, p26 - 63
Bodt, T.A., Lieberherr, I., First notes on the phonology and classification of the Bangru language of India, Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 38, (1), 2015, p66-123
Bodt, T.A., Ethnolinguistic survey of westernmost Arunachal Pradesh A fieldworker's impressions, Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 37, (2), 2014, p198-239
Anna Balikci Denjongpa & Jenny Bentley(ed.), 13th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Bulletin of Tibetology, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 50, (1&2), July 21-27, 2013, 2014, 153-190 p
Tshangla phonology and a standard Tshangla orthography in, editor(s)Thomas Owen-Smith & Nathan W. Hill , Trans-Himalayan Linguistics, Berlin, deGruyter, 2014, pp393 - 436, [Timotheus Adrianus Bodt]
T.A. Bodt, Community plantations with chir pine Pinus roxburghii (Sarg.) in Eastern Bhutan: The role of community preferences, site condition and site location factors, Sherub Doenme, 7, (1), 2007, p31 - 58
Tim Bodt, Role of the media in achieving a sustainable society, Media and Public Culture - Proceedings of the Second International Seminar on Bhutan Studies., Second International Seminar on Bhutan Studies., Thimphu, Bhutan, edited by CBS , CBS, 2007, pp459 - 501
T.A. Bodt, Non-convergence of objectives? An evaluation of social forestry in Eastern Bhutan, Wageningen University, 2002
T.A. Bodt, Economic and environmental effects of plastic ban and deysho production in Bhutan, Wageningen University, 2000
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
Uday Raj Aaley & Tim Bodt, """""""""" """""""" [Kusunda Picture Book], Lamahi, Dang, Nepal, 2022
Timotheus Adrianus Bodt & Johann-Mattis List., The multiple benefits of making predictions in linguistics., Babel, The Language Magazine, 31, 2020, p8 - 12
Uday Raj Aaley & Timotheus A. Bodt, Meet the Professionals: Uday Raj Aaley: Language teacher., Babel, The Language Magazine, 30, 2020, p44 - 45
Timotheus A. Bodt, Review of Martin Gaenszle (ed.): Ritual Speech in the Himalayas. Oral Texts and Their Contexts. (Harvard Oriental Series 93.) 222 pp. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 83, (1), 2020, p161 - 163
Timotheus A. Bodt, Duhumbi Dictionary, Arnhem, Monpasang Publications, 2020
Uday Raj Aaley & Timotheus A. Bodt, New Kusunda data: A list of 250 concepts., Computer-assisted language comparison in practice - Tutorials on computational approaches to the history and diversity of languages., 2020
Uday Raj Aaley & Timotheus A. Bodt., New Kusunda data: A list of 250 concepts., Computer-Assisted Language Comparison in Practice, 2020
Uday Raj Aaley & Timotheus Adrianus Bodt, New data on Kusunda, Humanities Commons, 2019
Timotheus A. Bodt, Nathan W. Hill & Johann-Mattis List., Prediction experiment for missing words in Kho-Bwa language data, Open Science Framework Preregistrations October 5, 2018
Timotheus Adrianus Bodt, Duhumbi Storybook, Arnhem, 2018
Timotheus Adrianus Bodt, Review of Lopen P. Ogyan Tanzin"s "Tshangs-lha-"i tshig-mdzod " Tshangla dictionary" (Sarnath 2015: Ogyan Chokhor-ling Foundation)., Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines, (36), 2016, p259 - 280
Timotheus Bodt, Phyugs kyis phyug: The cattle-wealthy Duhumbi people of the Chug valley, North East Spark, (Spring 2015), 2015, p49 - 50
Timotheus Adrianus Bodt, The New Lamp Clarifying the History, Peoples, Languages and Traditions of Eastern Bhutan and Eastern Mon, Wageningen, Monpasang Publications, 2012
T.A. Bodt, T. Dendup & L. Rinchen, '[ICIMOD flyer in Dzongkha]', Kathmandu Nepal, 2007, -
Research Expertise
Description
My main research interests are in language documentation and description, especially of smaller, lesser-known and endangered linguistic varieties, and in the linguistic reconstruction of their ancestral languages and linguistic histories. I have a background in environmental and agricultural economics, social forestry, and nature conservation. This background enables me to easily engage with rural communities on topics that matter to them, such as agriculture and livestock, rural development, sustainable use of forest and other natural resources, nature conservation and the human-wildlife conflict, and the impact of human activities, including climate change, on rural lives and livelihoods. My linguistic background and proficiency in several languages further facilitate such conversations. I also have a keen interest in human history, including migration and contact. My geographical focus is on the Himalayan region, and in particular the countries of Bhutan, Nepal, and the regions of Tibet (China) and Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh (India). Because of my maternal ancestry, I also have a keen interest in the languages and cultures of the Indonesian archipelago.Projects
- Title
- Lo-Rig
- Summary
- Gongduk and Mönpa are two Sino-Tibetan languages of Bhutan with no known relatives within the language family. Despite their unique morphosyntactic feature of biactantial verbal agreement, both languages have been largely overlooked in the literature. Gongduk and Mönpa are also at a high risk of extinction. Therefore, it is of absolute necessity that we write their descriptive grammars, based on a natural speech corpus, before they disappear forever. When a people lose mastery of their mother tongue, they often suffer from a loss of identity, and subsequently a plethora of emotional, mental, and social problems. Realising that the description of the world"s languages can provide indigenous communities with the basic set of materials to promote their linguistic heritage and counteract such negative developments, the United Nations has declared 2023-2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. At the same time, linguistic description offers science the opportunity to conduct ground-breaking typological and historical linguistic research. The exhaustive description of Gongduk and Mönpa will enable us to compare their verbal agreement systems to those of other Sino-Tibetan languages and infer the implications for the origin and development of verbal agreement and the language family as a whole. Bhutan"s unique cultural and linguistic heritage forms one of the cornerstones of its national identity and development philosophy. Technological advances present both a risk and an opportunity for safeguarding this heritage. The Lo-Rig project team will apply and develop innovative methods that speed up and simplify the transcription of recorded texts, using technologies such as Automatic Speech Recognition, and software applications for the subsequent analysis and dissemination of under-resourced, endangered languages. They will also train Bhutanese linguists, contributing to a more sustainable future of Bhutan"s languages, and produce outputs for language promotion.
- Funding Agency
- European Research Council
- Date From
- 01 June 2025
- Date To
- 31 May 2030
Recognition
Representations
Associate Editor, Himalayan Linguistics