PhD program grad Sonja Thoma interviewed about her work with Indigenous languages
Recent PhD program graduate Sonja Thoma has been working as a consultant and language coach on various projects in support of First Nations communities, and has been interviewed about this work on the Language Sciences site.
Oksana and Muhammad’s research featured in Pithy Papers
Language Sciences has organized Pithy Papers, a series of brief descriptions of UBC Language Sciences recent research. The inaugural installment features work by Oksana Tkachman on conventionalization in sign languages and by Muhammad Abdul-Mageed on ‘micro-dialects’.
Bryan Gick named AAAS Fellow
Bryan Gick has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for distinguished contributions to the field of experimental phonetics, notably for advances in multimodal perception and biomechanics. Congratulations, Bryan!
New course on the languages of Africa
The department is offering a new survey course, LING 308: Languages of Africa. Students will study African languages and cultures from the ground up, including through inquisitive exploration in language projects.
Three grad students recognized as UBC Public Scholars
Three grad students have been recognized as UBC Public Scholars. The Public Scholars Initiative supports doctoral students “make purposeful contributions to the public good through collaborative, action-oriented, and/or creative forms of scholarship.” They are Anne Bertrand, Roger Yu-Hsiang Lo, and Michael Schwan. Congratulations all around!
Abdul-Mageed in Medium on the language of COVID-19
Muhammad Abdul-Mageed has published a piece in Medium exploring how language use on social media reflects the impact of COVID-19 based on a large 65-language dataset that he and collaborators at UBC constructed.
Coronavirus phonetics cookbook
As a way to boost morale during isolation, the LING 314 (Instrumental Phonetics) class had an online potluck party, but, as they couldn’t actually share food, they shared recipes. The result was a coronavirus cookbook available to all.