Workshop Participants 

Revitalizing CoPAR for the Digital Age
June 2 to 3, 2016 University of Maryland, College Park
Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research

PROGRAM
WORKSHOP RESOURCES

Andrew Asher

AsherAndrew_20130910_02_BW

Andrew Asher

Andrew Asher is the Assessment Librarian at Indiana University Bloomington, where he leads the libraries’ qualitative and quantitative assessment programs and conducts research on the information practices of students and faculty.  Asher’s most recent projects have examined how “discovery” search tools influence undergraduates’ research processes, how students locate, evaluate, and utilize information on research assignments, and how university researchers manage and preserve their research data. From 2008-2010, Asher was the Lead Research Anthropologist for the Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries (ERIAL) project, a two-year study of student research processes at five Illinois universities and the largest ethnographic study of libraries undertaken to date. Asher holds a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has written and presented widely on using ethnography in academic libraries, including the co-edited volume, College Libraries and Student Cultures (ALA Editions, 2012). He also currently writing a methodological handbook for librarians on developing and implementing anthropological and other qualitative research methods in libraries. In addition to his work on academic libraries, Asher conducts research on the meanings and practices of citizenship in Poland, Germany and the European Union.

Joshua A. Bell

Joshua Bell

Joshua Bell

Combining ethnographic fieldwork with research in museums and archives, Dr. Joshua A. Bell (Curator of Globalization, National Museum of Natural History) examines the shifting local and global network of relationships between persons, artefacts and the environment. Since 2000 he has worked with communities in the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea to document the social, economic and ecological impacts of resource extraction. A central aspect of this work has been engaging Purari communities with the legacy of their cross-cultural involvement with the world now housed in archives and museums. In 2009 Joshua helped to create the Smithsonian Institution’s Recovering Voices program, and served as its first director (2012-2014). As part of this program he worked with colleagues to host a NSF-Smithsonian sponsored conference on digitally connecting communities to museum collections (2012), and has served as a co-PI on a major digitization project of text and audio materials at the National Anthropological Archives sponsored by the Arcadia Fund (2013-2015). Since 2011 he has been working to understand the extraordinary intimate and global relations materialized in cell phones. Currently he is carrying out collaborative research funded by the NSF on teenagers and cellphones in Washington, D.C.. To date Joshua has co-edited three books and published 40 journal articles and chapters on a range of topics. Prior to joining NMNH, he was an assistant professor at the University of East Anglia (2005-08).

Brian Carpenter

Brian Carpenter

Brian Carpenter is the Senior Archivist at the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) at the Library of the American Philosophical Society (APS). He began working at the APS in 2008 as the project archivist for a 6-year project to digitize and catalog the entirety of the Library’s audio collections relating to indigenous languages and cultures of the Americas. The results of the project revealed that the collections contain over 3100 hours of audio in 162 indigenous languages—far more on both counts than had been thought to be in the collections.

Since 2011, Brian has helped to send digital copies of APS materials to over 150 indigenous communities throughout North America. With the founding of CNAIR in 2014, Brian now serves as the primary archivist for the APS’s Native American and Indigenous collections—which date back to the 16th century and pertain to approximately 270 different cultures of the Americas—providing reference, digitization, processing, and outreach support to foster partnerships and collaborations with indigenous communities and scholars. He travels multiple times a year to communities where the APS has sent digitized materials to follow-up on how the materials are used in the community, to offer perspectives on approaches to building or strengthening local archives, and to receive guidance from knowledge keepers on the significance of the materials and how the APS can represent them more fully, accurately, and appropriately. He has also been working actively on raising awareness of the extent and nature of these materials among linguistics scholars in order to promote the use of legacy archival materials in contemporary language documentation and revitalization initiatives.

Lisa Cliggett

Lisa Cliggett

Lisa Cliggett

Lisa Cliggett (PhD, Indiana University) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky, and past editor of the Wiley-Blackwell journal Economic Anthropology. She has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Zambia since 1992. As a cultural anthropologist concentrating on economic and ecological anthropology, Cliggett’s scholarly work centers on the intersection of culture with economic systems, including the environmental foundations of the economy. Her research program is driven by a commitment to use anthropological and social science perspectives and methods to reveal the many ways that economic systems, human behavior and environmental change intersect over long time spans to produce poverty and well-being, power and resistance, environmental sustainability and collapse, and social justice and inequality, and how these processes play out on the ground in peoples’ day-to-day lives.

Cliggett has published in a variety of journals including American Anthropologist, Human Organization and Human Ecology. Her books include Grains from Grass: aging, gender and famine in rural Africa 2005; Economies and Cultures: foundations of Economic Anthropology (with Richard Wilk) 2007; Economies and the Transformation of Landscape (co-edited with Christopher Pool) 2008; and Tonga Timeline: Appraising 60 years of multidisciplinary research in Zambia and Zimbabwe (co-edited with Virginia Bond), 2013.

Alan Ojiig Corbiere

Alan Corbiere

Alan Corbiere

Alan Ojiig Corbiere, Bne doodemid (Ruffed Grouse clan), is an Anishinaabe from M’Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island.  He was educated on the reserve and then attended the University of Toronto for a Bachelor of Science, he then entered York University and earned his Masters of Environmental Studies.  During his masters studies he focused on Anishinaabe narrative and Anishinaabe language revitalization.  For five years he served as the Executive Director at the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation (OCF) in M’Chigeeng, a position which also encompassed the roles of curator and historian. Currently he is the Anishinaabemowin Revitalization Program Coordinator at Lakeview School, M’Chigeeng First Nation, where he and his team are working on a culturally based second language program that focuses on using Anishinaabe stories to teach language.

Nadine Dangerfield

Nadine Dangerfield

Nadine Dangerfield holds a BA in anthropology from Curtin University and an MAA from the University of Maryland. Her research interests include interpretation of Native American heritage and new museology. She has collaborated with the Piscataway people of Maryland on several projects and is currently pursuing a Certificate in Museum Scholarship and Material Culture. Nadine serves as the Assistant Director of Graduate Programs in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland where her focus is on enhancing the graduate programs through professionalization and diversity. She also teaches online as an adjunct faculty member at Howard Community College.

Celia Emmelhainz

Celia Emelheinz

Celia Emelheinz

Celia Emmelhainz (MA, MLIS) is the anthropology and qualitative research librarian at University of California, Berkeley. Prior to this, she worked as a data librarian at Colby College and as a social sciences librarian at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan, where she also conducted fieldwork on ethics and social science research.

Emmelhainz has consulted on an NSF-funded anthropological data archiving project, and served as research assistant for an NSF fieldwork project in western Mongolia. She currently serves as the librarian at the George and Mary Foster Anthropology Library at UC Berkeley, and works on library ethnography as well as qualitative research development projects.

Patricia Galloway

Pat Galloway

Pat Galloway

Patricia Galloway joined the University of Texas at Austin School of Information’s archival program, where she is now Professor, in 2000. She teaches courses in digital archives, archival appraisal, and historical museums. From 1979 to 2000 she worked at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, where she was an editor, historian, museum exhibit developer, and manager of archival information systems, and from 1997 to 2000 directed an NHPRC-funded project to create an electronic records program for Mississippi. Her academic qualifications include a BA in French from Millsaps College (1966); MA (1968) and PhD (1973) in Comparative Literature and PhD in Anthropology (2004), all from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was an archaeologist in Europe in the 1970s and supported what was then called humanities computing in the University of London 1977-79. She served on the Society of American Archivists Continuing Education and Professional Development committee 2005-2009, when the groundwork was prepared for SAA’s current Digital Archives Specialist certificate program, and has served on the Executive Board of the Society of Southwest Archivists. Her recent publications include a book of essays, Practicing Ethnohistory (2006), an article on “Digital Archiving” in the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science (2009), articles on “Intrinsic Value” and “Principle of Respect for Original Order” in the new Encyclopedia of Archival Science, and articles in American Archivist, Archivaria, D-Lib, Library Trends, Information and Culture, and IEEE Annals of the History of Computing.

Daniel Ginsberg

Daniel Ginsberg

Daniel Ginsberg

Daniel Ginsberg is Professional Fellow at the American Anthropological Association. He manages AAA research on the discipline and the profession of anthropology, supports AAA services to practicing and applied anthropologists and to university departments, and serves as staff liaison to the Committee on Practicing, Applied, and Public Interest Anthropology.

Daniel graduated with his PhD in linguistics from Georgetown University in December 2015. His dissertation employed multimodal analysis to understand interaction in the mathematics classroom, using data that he collected through a multi-site ethnographic project in secondary and postsecondary classroom settings. He also holds an MA in TESOL from the School for International Training, and has worked as a language test developer and language teacher in K-12, adult education and university contexts. Other interests include research ethics, inquiry-based pedagogy and practitioner inquiry.

Robin R. R. Gray

Robin R. R. Gray

Robin R. R. Gray

In 2015, Robin R. R. Gray completed her PhD in socio-cultural anthropology and Indigenous studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She now holds a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of California Santa Cruz. For the past three years, she has been facilitating community-based research projects with, by and for Ts’msyen peoples, including the repatriation of Ts’msyen songs from archives and an exploration of embodied heritage reclamation with an urban Ts’msyen dance group. Her book manuscript, in preparation, centers a decolonial analysis of the social, intellectual, legal and ethical dimensions associated with access and control of Indigenous cultural heritage.

Margaret Hedstrom

Margaret Hedstrom

Margaret Hedstrom

Margaret Hedstrom is the Robert M. Warner Collegiate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan where she teaches in the areas of archives, collective memory, and digital curation. She is PI for two large NSF-sponsored projects: SEAD (Sustainable Environments – Actionable Data) and an IGERT traineeship called “Open Data” that is investigating tools and policies for data sharing and data management across multiple disciplines. She was a member of the Board for Research Data and Information, National Academy of Sciences and chaired National Research Council study committee on Data Curation Workforce and Education Issues. She has served on numerous national and international boards, including the National Digital Strategy Advisory Board to the Library of Congress, the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation, U.S. Department of State, the ACLS Commission on Cyber-Infrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the International Scientific Advisory Board to the CATCH program, NWO, the Netherlands. Hedstrom is a fellow of the Society of American Archivists and recipient of a Distinguished Scholarly Achievement Award from the University of Michigan for her work with archives and cultural heritage preservation in South Africa.

Gwyneira Isaac

Gwen Isaac

Gwen Isaac

Gwyneira Isaac is Curator of North American Ethnology at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. Her research investigates the dynamics of and intersections between culturally specific knowledge systems. Central to this study is her fieldwork and ethnography of a tribal museum in the Pueblo of Zuni, New Mexico, where she examined challenges faced by Zunis operating between Zuni and Euro-American approaches to knowledge. Her current work at the Smithsonian analyzes knowledge dynamics resulting from interdisciplinary and cross-cultural projects developed between communities, government agencies and museums that are collaborating around American Indian health issues.

Lori Jahnke

Lori Jahnke

Lori Jahnke

Lori Jahnke is the Anthropology Librarian at Emory University. She holds a PhD in Biological Anthropology and her research interests include the biological impact of colonization and social stratification, the ancient Andes, and non-textual systems of information organization and communication. Lori also contributes to several research data curation projects and was a Research Lead for the Sloan sponsored CLIR/DLF study on data management practices among university researchers.

In support of her research in anthropology and information science, Lori has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Lewis and Clark Fund at the American Philosophical Society, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies. She has presented at numerous conferences including the Coalition for Networked Information, the Digital Library Federation Forum, American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the Society for American Archaeology, and the American Anthropological Association.

Jesse Johnston

Jesse Johnston

Jesse Johnston

Jesse Johnston is a Program Officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Preservation and Access. He previously worked at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, where was an Archives Specialist in the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections and worked on metadata and digital description for archival audio collections. His research focuses on the performance of Moravian traditional music in the Czech Republic and user access practices in audiovisual archives. He has conducted field research in traditional and popular musics with communities in the Czech Republic, the Philippines, and Czech-Americans in the Upper Midwest. He previously taught musicology at Bowling Green State University and the University of Michigan–Dearborn. His research has been supported by a Fulbright Fellowship (2005), a Kohn Doctoral Fellowship (Masaryk University), a Rackham Humanities Dissertation Writing Fellowship, and twice by Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships. At Michigan, he also received the Margaret Mann Award (2012) and the Louise E. Cuyler Award (2008). He holds a PhD in musicology and a Master of Science in Information, both from the University of Michigan.

Robert Leopold

Robert Leopold

Robert Leopold

Robert Leopold is deputy director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, where he provides leadership for curatorial research, education, archives, and cultural sustainability programs. Previously, he directed the Smithsonian’s Consortium for World Cultures and earlier, the National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives, where he contributed his expertise to knowledge repatriation and language revitalization initiatives including Recovering Voices, a Smithsonian initiative that promotes the documentation and revitalization of the world’s endangered languages and the knowledge preserved in them. Since 2004, Robert has served as chair of the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR). He is currently engaged in two five-year projects: Preserving Cultural Heritage in Ethnic Tibetan Communities in China (in partnership with the Aspen Institute Alliance for Artisan Enterprise, GoodWeave International, The Bridge Fund, and UNESCO) and Sustaining Minority Languages in Europe (or SMiLE, in partnership with the Study Group on Endangered Languages at the University of Barcelona). Robert is a former Fulbright Fellow who conducted ethnographic research on marriage alliance and ritual collaboration in Liberia. His current research interests include the sociology of language vitality, information ethics, ethnographic and Indigenous archives, and digital cultural heritage. Robert holds a B.A. in English literature from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Indiana University.

Mary S. Linn

linn

Mary Linn

Mary S. Linn is Curator of Cultural and Linguistic Revitalization at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, working in endangered language documentation and revitalization along with the Smithsonian’s Recovering Voices initiative. She is also on the steering committee for the National Breath of Life Archival Institute. From 2002 to 2014, she was the curator of Native American languages at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. There she worked collaboratively with indigenous communities and museum programming, initiating the Oklahoma Breath of Life Workshop and the Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair. Her publications include Living Archives: A Community-based Language Archive Model (2014) and contributions in Yuchi Folklore (Jason Baird Jackson, 2013). Mary holds a B.A. in American studies from Wichita State University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Kansas, and credits the Euchee (Yuchi), Oklahoma Seminole, Absentee Shawnee, Osage, and Kiowa, among others, for most of her training.

Diana E. Marsh

Diana E Marsh

Diana Marsh

Diana E. Marsh is an Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow at the American Philosophical Society (APS), where she is researching digital knowledge sharing in Native communities. Her project was inspired by the findings of the Smithsonian- UMD project, “Valuing Our Scans.” She was co-curator on the exhibition “Gathering Voices: Thomas Jefferson and Native America” (open through December 2016), which showcases the APS’s Native American and Indigenous archival collections, and their re-use in communities today. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of British Columbia in 2014.

Francis P. McManamon

Francis P. McManamon

Francis P. McManamon

Francis P. McManamon is the Executive Director of the Center for Digital Antiquity at Arizona State University (ASU), an organization devoted to broadening and improving the ease of access to archaeological information and to the long-term preservation of archaeological information. He also is a Research Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at ASU.

Prior to joining Digital Antiquity in 2009, McManamon served as the Chief Archeologist of the U. S. National Park Service (1995–2009) and the Departmental Consulting Archeologist of the Department of the Interior (1991–2009). In 1998–2000, he led the US government’s investigation of the Kennewick Man skeletal remains from Washington State.

He is the author of articles, commentaries, and reviews on a variety of archaeological and cultural heritage topics. His most book is Caring for Digital Data in Archaeology: A Guide to Good Practice (2013), co-authored and edited with Adam Brin and Kieron Niven.     He is coeditor of the books: Managing Archaeological Resources: Global Context National Programs, Local Actions (2008); The Antiquities Act: A Century of American Archaeology, Historic Preservation, and Nature Conservation (2006); and, Cultural Resource Management in Contemporary Society (2000). He is the general editor of a 4-volume encyclopedia, Archaeology in America (2009), which was named as an outstanding reference work by the American Library Association in 2010.

Dr. McManamon graduated from Colgate University; he received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the State University of New York at Binghamton. He has been involved in archeological investigations in eastern North America, Western Europe, and Micronesia.

Daisy Njoku

Daisy Njoku

Daisy Njoku

Daisy Njoku has been Media Resource Specialist with the National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives in the Smithsonian Institution since 1996.   Daisy has worked for many years in rights, reproduction and access for the Archives’ audio-visual material and is has been spending the last couple of years  overseeing the digitization of approximately 3000 analog sound recordings (and associated textual material) from the Archives’ collections. She received her MA in Anthropology with a concentration in Museum Studies from the George Washington University and is currently pursing a certificate from the Society of American Archivists’ Digital Archives Specialist Program.

Michael Pahn

Michael Pahn

Michael Pahn

Michael Pahn is the Head of Archives and Digitization at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, located in the museum’s Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland. Michael began at NMAI in 2003 as its Media Archivist, and has overseen preservation projects funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation, Save America’s Treasures, and the Smithsonian Collections care and Preservation Fund. He has been NMAI’s Head Archivist since 2014. His prior work experiences include Save Our Sounds Project Librarian at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, and Librarian at The Nature Conservancy. Michael is currently Chair of the Society of American Archivists’ Native American Archives Roundtable Steering Committee. He has a BA in Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh and an MLS from the University of Maryland.

Ricky Punzalan

Ricky Punzalan

Ricky Punzalan

Ricky Punzalan is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland College of Information Studies, where he teaches courses on archives and digital curation. His area of research includes understanding the relationship of archives and collective memory, the politics and dynamics of digitization decision-making in collaborative and inter-institutional settings, and the uses and users of digitized archival images. He also examines ‘virtual reunification’ as a strategy to provide integrated access to dispersed ethnographic archival images online. He holds a Ph.D. in Information from the University of Michigan’s School of Information. In addition to an MLIS from the University of the Philippines, he completed two certificates of graduate studies at Michigan, one in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) and another in Museum Studies. Prior to his doctoral work at Michigan, he taught on the faculty of the University of the Philippines School of Library and Information Studies. His articles have been published in Archives and ManuscriptsArchivaria, and Archival Science.

Gina Rappaport

Gina Rappaport

Gina Rappaport

Gina Rappaport is the Photo Archivist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Anthropological Archives (NAA). As such, she is responsible for all aspects of managing the NAA’s photograph collections, including appraisal, arrangement and description, preservation, and collection development. As the Head Archivist, she is the main point of contact for questions regarding acquisitions, tours, loans, and other archives matters. Before joining the Smithsonian in 2009, Gina was a project archivist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pribilof Project Office where she co-authored The Pribilof Islands, a Guide to Photographs and Illustrations, a publication on historical visual resources relating to Pribilof Islands History. Prior to this Gina worked as a project archivist for a variety of individuals and institutions, including the University of Washington, The National Park Service, and the Winthrop Group. Gina’s research and professional interests orient on the integration of archival theory into practice, especially with respect to the management of photographic collections, and the responsive and respectful care of collections relating to indigenous communities. Gina received her MA in history and archival studies from Western Washington University in 2007.

Loriene Roy

Loriene Roy

Loriene Roy

Loriene Roy is Professor in the School of Information, the University of Texas at Austin. Her teaching areas are reference, library instruction/information literacy, and access and care of traditional knowledge. She is especially recognized for her work with tribal communities including the founding of a national reading club for Native children. She has given over 600 formal presentations at venues around the world and has published hundreds of articles, book chapters, newsletter contributions, book reviews, and reports. She is currently co-editing her seventh book, “Indigenous Notions of Ownership and Libraries, Archives and Museums.” She is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2014 Sarah Vann Award from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa; distinguished alumnus awards from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Arizona; 2009 Leadership Award from the National Conference Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums; 2007 State of Texas, Senate Proclamation No. 127; 2006 Equality Award from the American Library Association; recognition as a 2005 Mover and Shaker by Library Journal; and the Joe and Bettie Branson Ward Excellence Award for Research, Teaching, or Demonstration Activities that Contribute to Changes of Positive Value to Society Award from The University of Texas at Austin in 2001. In addition, she received two James W. Vick Texas Excellence Awards for Academic Advisors and two Texas Excellence in Teaching awards through the University of Texas at Austin. Her current advisory board service includes the Library of Congress Literacy Awards; Design on Learning: 21st Century Online Learning for Library Workers, Leadership Team; and the StoryCorps Tribal Libraries Advisory Board. She served as the 2007-2008 President of the American Library Association and the 1997-1998 President of the American Indian Library Association. She is Anishinabe, enrolled on the White Earth Reservation, a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe.

Alyce Sadongei

Alyce Sadongei

Alyce Sadongei

Alyce Sadongei (Kiowa/Tohono O’odham) has an award winning career history of working with Native American arts and culture. She was the first Native American director of the American Indian Museum Studies Program at the Smithsonian Institution where she laid the foundation for the current training opportunities available at the National Museum of the American Indian. While at the Arizona State Museum she was principle investigator on numerous grants, including an eight year project that focused on tribal libraries, archives and museums in partnership with the Arizona State Library and funded by IMLS. She has subject expertise in repatriation, consultation and research regarding pesticide use on museum objects subject to repatriation and was also a contributor to the Protocols for Native American Archives. She received the Director’s Chair Award from the Western Museums Association for her contributions to the museum field at a national level. Alyce was the first recipient of a leadership award given by the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums in recognition for her work with tribal communities throughout all discipline areas of archives, museums and libraries. She has published work focusing on issues related to Native American repatriation, collections care, and community collaboration. Her poetry has been translated and published in French and Hungarian journals. She has served on numerous boards and commissions including the Arizona Humanities Council, Pima Arts Council, the governor-appointed state board for Historic and Geographic Names, and was co-founder of the American Indian Museum Collaboration Network. She currently serves on the board of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Partnerships with Native Americans. She is currently the Project Coordinator for the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) at the University of Arizona.

Sydel Silverman

Sydel Silverman

Sydel Silverman

Sydel Silverman is president emerita of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and professor emerita of anthropology at the City University of New York.  She holds a master’s degree in human development from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University.  She taught at Queens College and at the CUNY Graduate Center, serving as executive officer of the doctoral program in anthropology for eleven years and also as acting dean of the Graduate School.  Her major research has been in the anthropological study of complex societies (especially Italy) and in the history of anthropology.  She is the author or editor of nine books and numerous journal articles.  During her years at Wenner-Gren (1987-1999), she led an initiative to encourage preservation of the unpublished research materials of anthropology, which included publication of Preserving the Anthropological Record (co-edited with Nancy J. Parezo) and creation of CoPAR, the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records.

Mark Turin

Mark Turin

Mark Turin

Mark Turin (PhD, Linguistics, Leiden University, 2006) is an anthropologist, linguist and radio presenter. Before joining the University of British Columbia as Chair of the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program and Associate Professor of Anthropology, Mark was an Associate Research Scientist with the South Asian Studies Council at Yale University, and the Founding Program Director of the Yale Himalaya Initiative. Prior to Yale, Mark was a Research Associate at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. At UBC, Mark is an Associate Member of the Department of Asian Studies an a Faculty Associate at the Institute of Asian Research.

Mark directs both the World Oral Literature Project, an urgent global initiative to document and make accessible endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record, and the Digital Himalaya Project which he co-founded in 2000 as a platform to make multi-media resources from the Himalayan region widely available online.

Mark has held research appointments at Cornell and Leipzig universities, as well as the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology in Sikkim, India. From 2007 to 2008, he served as Chief of Translation and Interpretation at the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN).

Mark Turin writes and teaches on ethnolinguistics, language endangerment, visual anthropology, digital archives and fieldwork methodology. He is the author or co-author of four books, three travel guides, the editor of eight volumes, the co-editor of the journal Himalaya and he edits a series on oral literature. Mark is a regular BBC presenter on issues of linguistic diversity and language endangerment. He also serves as Advisor to the Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project.