Researchers & Volunteers
Researchers and volunteers in a range of other capacities have provided crucial assistance in all of ELA’s projects. ELA doesn’t have a formal volunteer program, but occasionally works with volunteers on projects of mutual interest.
Irwin Sánchez, a Nahuatl speaker from La Resurrección, in the Mexican state of Puebla, has been collaborating with ELA since the very beginning. Irwin is an accomplished chef (written up most recently here) who teaches language through food and about food through language. He is a regular presenter at ELA events and is currently working on a book of bilingual poetry in Nahuatl to be published by ELA.
Daniel Barry, a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the CUNY Graduate Center, works on historical linguistics, contact linguistics, and phonetics and phonology. He has taught linguistics and Kurdish and contributed significantly to ELA’s research on Wakhi and Zaza.
Alexis Paz is a P’urhepecha speaker who grew up partly in Ocumicho, in the Mexican state of Michoacan, and partly in York, Pennsylvania, where a number of P’urhepecha people have settled. Alexis has been the primary contributor to ELA’s P’urhepecha project having recorded, transcribed, translated and glossed a large number texts, which can now be found in ELA’s Kratylos corpus.
James Lovell, a popular Garifuna singer and musician who has been working over the last decade to teach the Garifuna language to children through song and performance. James directed the musical and linguistic arm of the Yugacure program, which brought the Garifuna language back to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the ancestral homeland of the Garifuna people, for the first time since their exile. James continues performing and teaching both in New York, his native Belize, and elsewhere in the Garifuna diaspora.
Alex Kwabena Colon, a Garifuna musician and teacher who hails from Punta Gorda, Belize. Alex worked with ELA to transcribe and translate dozens of songs and interviews with the Garifuna community in Belize and New York as part of ELDP sponsored documentation of the endangered arumahani and abeimahani vocal traditions. Alex has also worked as a consultant on ongoing explorations of Garifuna grammar.
Shweta Akolkar, a PhD candidate in linguistics at UC Berkeley who has led the Bishnupriya Manipuri project from 2019 to the present, collected texts and leading elicitation sessions with native speaker Uttam Singha towards a descriptive grammar and more complete documentation of the language.
Perry Wong, a PhD candidate in linguistics and anthropology at the University of Chicago, worked at ELA in many capacities during 2013-2014, including archiving, training, documentation work, and Indigenous & English literacy classes with our partners in East Harlem.
Ahmed Shamim (Koda)
Lluvia Camacho-Cervantes (Amuzgo, Purhepecha)
Natalia Bermudez (Naso, Garifuna)
Christopher Geissler (FLEx corpus building, Gurung, Ikota)
Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein (Garifuna, development & strategy)
Mirella Blum (annotation, multiple projects)
Emily Gref (storybooks, mapping)
Kalvin Hartwig (Ojibwe, Indigenous youth film project)
Jake Freyer (archive)
Gloria Yang (archive)
Karyn Tasens (Fishman Library)
Violeta Vázquez-Maldonado (Nahuatl, Amuzgo)
Zach Wellstood (Gurung, storybooks)
Lingzi Zhuang (Gurung)
Sophie Pierson (Garifuna)
Ignacio Montoya (Amuzgo, Ikota, East Harlem language exchange)
Kevin Kwong (Ikota)
Matthew Malone (mapping, census)
Simona Bua (videography, Sicilian)
Bien Dobui (Amuzgo, bookkeeping, development)
Sara Afridi (videography, Voices of the Himalaya)
Tierney Brown (Voices of the Himalaya)
Edmund O’Neill (IT)
Teresa O’Neill (Garifuna, Zaza, field methods)
Adam Cooper (Amuzgo)
Austin Dean (Seke)
Tatiana Dubin (film editing, transcription)
Greg Feliu (Neapolitan, Nones, Romansch, Tsou, Ikota, archive)
Amanda Owensby (Gurung)
Siyang Pan (Tsou, Zaza)
Kathryn Rafailov (Juhuri)
Kaela Fong (Ladino)
Nicole Galpern (research, videography)
Stephanie Gilardi
Jessica Rose Holtz (Quechua)
Emily Long (Ikota)
Kevin Hughes (Garifuna)
Nicole Hughes (social media)
Safiya Husain (archiving, Mandaic)
Samantha Mia Mateo (Zaza)
Harmony Graziano (Seke)
Timothy Matthes (Zaghawa/Beria, Masalit)
Connor McCabe (Irish)
Timothy McKeon (Irish)
Brennan McManus (Seke)
Casey Robinson (fundraising)
Danielle Ronkos (Gurung)
Jacqueline Sarro (multiple projects)
Rachel Sprouse (Quechua)
Rebecca Stephen (Zaza, mapping)
Guy Tabachnik (Shughni)
Jasmine Torres (Video, website)
James Wedgwood (Wakhi)
Christopher Wen (Zaza, Indigenous health projects)
Patrick A. Mather (early mapping)
Kristin Pak (early mapping)
Nina Porzucki (early mapping)
Jovan Stojanovich (early mapping)
Robin Stringer (early mapping)
Nancy Taylor (early mapping)
David Thepaut (early mapping)
Mark Ulrich (early mapping)
Nicole Velasco (early mapping)
Emily Wilson (early mapping)