- Prof. Dr. Tomasz Wicherkiewicz
Prof. Wicherkiewicz is a Polish linguist who specializes in sociolinguistics, language policy and planning, as well as minority studies, with a special interest in endangered, minority and minorized, lesser-spoken, underresourced, and underresearched languages and their communities, in language revitalization and documentation, and in minority language rights protection and research. His research also includes typologies and sociolinguistics (including historical sociolinguistics) of writing systems and their elements. He authored and led the project Poland’s Linguistic Heritage – Documentation Database for Endangered Languages – www.inne-jezyki.amu.edu.pl. One of the international projects he participated in resulted in the website http://LanguagesInDanger.eu
Tomasz Wicherkiewicz is a university professor and the head of the Department of Language Policy & Minority Studies at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. He studied in the Netherlands and Germany and worked with minority communities and academia, mainly in Europe, Asia, and North America. In 2018-2019, he stayed as a visiting professor at the University of Hokkaido in Sapporo, Japan, in 2019-2020, and in 2022 as a fellow researcher in the Smithsonian Institution program Recovering Voices in Washington, DC; in 2022 he was also a visiting researcher at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, NC and the University of Texas in Austin, TX, the latter three as part of the EU-financed project COLING. Minority Languages, Major Opportunities. Collaborative Research, Community Engagement, and Innovative Educational Tools – coling.al.uw.edu.pl.
He has been one of the initiators of the project Language(s) in Museum(s). He is particularly interested in the role language(s) play(s) in museums, museums of language and linguistics worldwide, and particularly in community language museums and their role in language maintenance, preservation, and revitalization.
2. Prof. Nirmal Man Tuladhar
Prof. Tuladhar is a pioneer sociolinguist in Nepal. He is the former executive director at the Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS), Tribhuvan University. He is also the past president of the Linguistic Society of Nepal. He contributed even as the chief editor of Nepalese Linguistics, a journal of the Linguistic Society of Nepal from 198 to 1991. He served as the visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies (ASAFAS), Kyoto University, Japan; Social Policy Analysis and Research Centre (SPARC), Faculty of Arts, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka; Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation (IDEC), Hiroshima University, Japan.
His involvements are in the following research projects:
- Linguistic Survey of Nepal (LinSuN), National Planning Commission, Government of Nepal and Central Department of Linguistics, Tribhuvan University, 3rd March 2009 – 9th January 2018.
- Contributions to Nepalese Studies made by the Japanese Scholars, ASAFAS, Kyoto University.
- Sociolinguistic Survey of the Jirel Community, CNAS, TU
- Testing Nepali as a Second Language, CNAS, TU
- The Household Distribution Survey: Phase I and II, Nepal CRS and FP/MCH Project
- Studies in Bilingualism: Pilot Project No. 2 and No. 3, INAS, Tribhuvan University
- The Development Message of the Gorkhapatra and Some Measures of its Effectiveness, INAS, Tribhuvan University
