People

Project Director

James A. Matisoff is Principal Investigator of STEDT and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at UC Berkeley. He is one of the world's leading experts on the languages of Southeast Asia and the Tibeto-Burman language family.

Current STEDTniks

STEDT researchers are affectionately known as STEDTniks. Individuals currently working at STEDT or otherwise attached to the project include:

Dr. John B. Lowe
John started the STEDT project with Prof. Matisoff in 1987, when he was a PhD student in Linguistics. He earned his PhD in 1995, and the topic of his dissertation focused on STEDT and computational historical linguistics. He is an expert in natural language processing, and has wide experience in the computational analysis of language data.
Dr. Liberty Lidz
Liberty received her PhD in linguistics from UT Austin in 2010. For her dissertation, she wrote a descriptive grammar of Yongning Na, a Tibeto-Burman language of southwestern China. Her interests include language description and documentation, morphosyntax, and language contact. She returned to STEDT in 2009.
Dr. Kenneth VanBik
Ken received his PhD in linguistics from UC Berkeley in 2006. His first association with STEDT predates his entry into the PhD program in linguistics at UC Berkeley. He is a native speaker of Hakha Lai Chin and is an expert on the Kuki-Chin branch of Tibeto-Burman.
Dr. David Mortensen
David received his PhD in linguistics from UC Berkeley in 2006. He began working at STEDT in 2001, and is now teaching at the Univ. of Pittsburgh. His research interests center around the phonology, morphology, and historical development of Hmong-Mien and Tibeto-Burman languages.
Dr. Dominic Yu
Dominic received his PhD in linguistics from UC Berkeley in 2012. He has been working at STEDT since 2004. His interests include phonetics and phonology, historical linguistics, and Sino-Tibetan. He has conducted fieldwork on Lizu, a Qiangic language spoken in southwest China.
Dr. Daniel Bruhn
Daniel received his PhD in linguistics from UC Berkeley in 2014 and has been working at STEDT since 2009. His research focuses on the historical development of the Tibeto-Burman languages of Nagaland, and his dissertation is a phonological reconstruction of the ancestor of the Central Naga languages.
Dr. Chundra Cathcart
Chundra received his PhD in linguistics from UC Berkeley in 2015. His interests are historical linguistics, phonology, and Central, South and Southeast Asian areal linguistics. Chundra has accepted a position in Lund, Sweden to work on an Etymological Dictionary of Tocharian starting this fall.

Past STEDTniks

  • Madeleine Adkins
  • Jocelyn Ahlers
  • Shelley Axmaker
  • Stephen P. Baron
  • Leela Bilmes (Goldstein)
  • Michael Brodhead
  • Jeff Chan
  • Patrick Chew
  • Melissa Chin
  • Isara Choosri
  • Dr. Richard Cook
    Richard has been a STEDT researcher since 1998, maintaining and extending the project's etymological database system. In 2003, he received his PhD in linguistics from UC Berkeley. He is a specialist in historical Chinese lexicography, and has produced the first-ever digitization of a complete Shuo Wen text.
  • Jeff Dale
  • Amy Dolcourt
  • Julia Elliot
  • Jonathan P. Evans
  • Allegra Giovine
  • Cynthia Gould
  • Daniel Granville
  • Joshua Guenter
  • Kira Hall
  • Zev J. Handel
  • Takumi Ikeda
  • Annie Jaisser
  • Matthew Juge
  • David Kamholz
  • Nina Keefer
  • Jean Kim
  • Kyung-Ah Kim
  • Heidi Kong
  • Aimée Lahaussois (Bartosik)
  • Randy J. LaPolla
  • Jennifer Leehey
  • Anita Liang
  • Liberty Lidz
  • John B. Lowe
  • Jean McAneny
  • Pamela Morgan
  • David Mortensen
  • Karin Myrhe
  • Ju Namkung
  • Toshio Ohori
  • Weera Ostapirat
  • Jeong-Woon Park
  • Jason Patent
  • Chris Redfearn
  • S. Ruffin
  • Keith Sanders
  • Marina Shawver
  • Elizabeth Shriberg
  • Helen Singmaster
  • Tanya Smith
  • Gabriela Solomon
  • Silvia Sotomayor
  • Jackson Tianshin Sun
  • Laurel Sutton
  • Prashanta Tripura
  • Nancy Urban
  • Kenneth VanBik
  • Blong Xiong
  • Liansheng Zhang

Past Visitors (partial list)

  • Kato Atsuhiko, Osaka University
  • Chungkham Yashawanta, Manipur University
  • Maung Maung Tun, Payap University (Chiangmai, Thailand). He and Prof. Matisoff (and indeed the rest of the STEDT team) are working on Lahu, a Loloish language of Northern Thailand.