lecture series -Perspectives in Mother Tongue Education

Speaker Biographies

Shawo Dondrup, Project Manager, Hainan Prefecture Junior Middle School Pilot Project, Trace Foundation, Qinghai Province, P.R.China

Shawo Dondrup is a respected scholar, teacher, and writer. He holds degrees in Tibetan language, physics, and English education, and has many years of experience teaching courses in language, mathematics, and science in primary and secondary schools in Tibetan areas of Qinghai. In recent years, he has worked in teacher training and currently manages a pilot project aimed at improving the quality of Tibetan-medium instruction at junior middle schools in in Qinghai. His diverse Tibetan-language publications include regional histories, poems, and books and articles on Tibetan language in the sciences. He has also co-authored a book in English on the Wutun language entitled, Wutun.

François Grin, Professor of Economics, School of Translation and Interpretation (ETI), University of Geneva, Switzerland

François Grin specializes in language and education economics and the evaluation of language policies. He is a professor of Economics at the Institute of Translation and Interpretation (ETI) at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He has previously served as Deputy Director of the State of Geneva's Education Research Unit and as Deputy Director of the Flensburg European Center for Minority Issues (ECMI). He has worked with numerous research foundations, governments, and international organisations such as Council of Europe, European Commission, World Bank Institute, and Francophone Education and Research Agency. He sits on the scientific board of journals such as Language Policy; Language Problems and Language Planning; DiversCité-Langues; the Swiss Education Science Review; and Language Policy.

Tenzin Norbu Nangsal, Instructor of Modern Tibetan Language, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, New York

Tenzin Norbu Nangsal is an accomplished educator and writer. Born in Lhasa, he graduated from Tibet University in 1990 with a B.A. in biology. For several years, he taught Tibetan language and biology in middle schools in Lhasa. He has taught courses on Tibetan language and Tibetan culture at universities in the US for over a decade. He currently teaches Tibetan Language at Columbia University, in New York City. His publications in Tibetan language include a general introduction to Tibet’s environment, two volumes on endangered species of Tibet, dictionaries on plants and animals, as well as children’s books, such as the illustrated children's story A Little Frog and a Crow (2007).

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Professor Emerita, University of Roskilde, Department of Languages and Culture, Denmark and Åbo Akademi University, Department of Education, Vasa, Finland

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas is a seminal figure in the field of minority education, multilingualism, and linguistic rights. Bilingual from birth in Finnish and Swedish, her main research interests are language rights, linguistic imperialism, bilingualism, multilingual education, language and power, subtractive spread of English, and the relationship between linguistic (and cultural) diversity and biodiversity. She is the recipient of the 2003 Linguapax Award and the 2003 Carl Axel Gottlund Award. Her publications include over 50 authored or edited books, nearly 400 book chapters and scientific articles, in some 30 languages. She lives on a small ecological, organic farm with her husband, Robert Phillipson; the farm work keeps both fit.

Minglang Zhou, Chair and Associate Professor, East Asian Studies, Dickinson College, Pennsylvania, USA

Minglang Zhou is a respected scholar of language policy, multilingualism, and ethnic relations in China. His publications include Multilingualism in China: The politics of writing reform for minority languages; Language policy in China: Theory and practice since 1949; and Affirmative Action in China and the U.S.: A Dialogue on Inequality and Minority Education (forthcoming). He has been the guest editor of a special issue of Journal of Asian Pacific Communication on the theme of language planning and varieties of Modern Standard Chinese and an issue of Chinese Society and Education on the topic of linguistic diversity and language harmony in the 21st century China.

lecture series -Perspectives in Mother Tongue Education

Speaker Biographies

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