About this Series
Selected contributors, renowned experts in diverse subfields, will present a vibrant array of Elements clustered thematically into five blocks, exploring theoretical concepts, typological perspectives, linguistic ecologies, diversity preservation, and decolonization. This evolving series fosters a flexible, dynamic content framework, adapting to emerging collaborative and participatory research paradigms. Readers will enjoy a digital-first experience, engaging with cutting-edge research, addressing burning questions, and navigating urgent challenges. Cambridge Elements in Linguistic Diversity caters to a broad academic readership, from scholars to graduate and undergraduate students, activists, and community-based researchers, fostering a global dialogue on the vital intersections of linguistic diversity, minoritized languages, and decolonial studies.
Areas of interest
- Theoretical conceptualizations of and approaches to linguistic diversity
- Linguistic diversity from a typological perspective
- Ecologies of linguistic diversity
- Protecting and fostering diversity
- Decolonising and deglobalising diversity
Series Editor
Alexander Andrason
Justyna Olko
Katarzyna I. Wojtylak
Contact the Editor
Series Editor Biography
Alexander Andrason (University of Cape Town) holds a PhD in Semitic Languages (University Complutense, Madrid), a PhD in African Languages (Stellenbosch University), and a PhD in General Linguistics (University of Iceland). His research spans linguistics, cognitive science, complexity theory, anthropology, pedagogy, and philosophy. Specialising in cognitive linguistics, he explores semantics, morphosyntax, sociolinguistics, language contact, typology, grammaticalization theory, human-to-animal communication, and gestures. Proficient in approximately thirty living languages and well-versed in ancient and classical languages, Andrason's interests encompass Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo, Nilotic, Dogon, Khoe-Kwadi, and Turkic languages as well as language isolates. Currently leading a project documenting "peripheral" language phenomena in African languages, he focuses on interjections, onomatopoeias, conative animal calls, and gestures. He has contributed to linguistic scholarship with over 170 articles as well as edited journals, authored grammars, and language books.
Justyna Olko is professor in the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw and director of its Center for Research and Practice in Cultural Continuity. She specializes in ethnohistory, sociolinguistics, contact linguistics, multilingualism, language endangerment, and revitalization as well as decolonising research practices and relationships between language use, well-being and health. She has worked with numerous Indigenous language communities in Europe and Mexico and currently leads an ERC-funded project on historical and contemporary multilingualism with case studies on four continents. Olko’s most recent publications include (as co-editor and co-author) Revitalizing Endangered Languages. A Practical Guide (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and Living with Nature, Cherishing Language. Indigenous Knowledges in the Americas Through History (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024). A recipient of two grants from the European Research Council and a 2020 winner of the Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year in social sciences and humanities for “Breaking the walls between Academy and local communities in favour of linguistic diversity”. More at www.jolko.al.uw.edu.pl.
Katarzyna (Kasia) I. Wojtylak is an Assistant professor at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Oriental Studies. Her PhD dissertation (2017, James Cook University in Australia, awarded Summa Cum Laude) is a reference grammar of Murui, a Witotoan language spoken in southern Colombia and northern Peru. The grammar, published with Brill 2020, stems from two years of fieldwork in the Amazon conducted between 2010 and 2017. Over the years, she taught linguistics and language documentation in Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands, and worked on data archival of endangered languages at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. She has a strong background in linguistic description and analysis, language documentation, ethnographic research, and visual anthropology. Her current work focuses on language contact in the Caqueta-Putumayo region of Northwest Amazonia, Colombia and Peru. She (co-)authored over 30 articles and book chapters, including three co-edited volumes, and a monograph.