CELCE Announces New leadership group
With previous co-directors Janet Watson and Jon Lovett retired or retiring, we have new leaders and a new leadership team. Tim Thurston, Serge Sharoff (both of LCS), and Radhika Borde (Geography) are the new co-directors, while Josie South, David Williams (both of Biology), and Gise Tomé Lourido (LCS) round out the leadership group. We are very grateful for Janet's and Jon's commitment and leadership with CELCE. Janet and Jon continue to contribute to our conversations. Find out more about the new leadership below:
Tim Thurston: As a folklorist, I admit to being most interested in language and culture. Studying the vernacular cultures of Tibetan communities in the PRC, however, I am constantly confronted with the fact that Tibetan cosmologies, lifeways, and vernacular are inextricably intertwined with the natural world. Over the last few years with CELCE, I have also learned considerably from colleagues working across these areas of interest and from the events held, and I look forward to continuing this into the future.
Serge Sharoff: I became fascinated with the idea of Language Models back in the 1990s when I started doing my PhD. In December 2022 saw the vindication of this interest when ChatGPT suddenly grabbed the headlines. From a person advocating the benefits of language models for the entirety of my academic career, I turned into a skeptic, just to provide a better balance of opinions. I would like to work with other colleagues within CELCE to help with reaping the benefits of Large Language Models, while also promoting reasons for greater caution.
Jon Lovett: My first degree was in Botany and after graduating I lived in Tanzania for 12 years researching mountain rainforests where I learnt the basics of some of the many Tanzanian languages and collected information on the names and uses of plants. After emerging from the forest in the early 1990s I shifted my research to economics and how language is used in the sustainable management of natural resources, and this has now extended to language and energy technologies.
Radhika Borde: I have studied comparative literature, Asian religions, cultural geography and environmental policy, and I am very interested in the intersection between linguistic cultures and place-based literary cultures. Most of my research has been on Indigenous rural communities in East-Central India – on how the religions and cultures of these communities are entangled with their natural environment and how they mobilize these entanglements to fight destructive development. I am also currently researching the threats to the tangible and intangible aspects of Sufi cultures in New Delhi.
Josie South: I am a conservation biologist and invasion scientist working in aquatic ecosystems, mainly on fish. Fish are not just food, they have a strange way of intersecting with many cultures and many aspects of life. Fish populations are disappearing six times faster than terrestrial species, and with them so are the languages and myths surrounding them which further separates people and nature. Invasive species represent the reverse of this. Where new species, sometimes without local names, establish and create new cultures and language related to them.
David Williams: I am a conservation scientist interested in what I believe is the greatest challenge of the next few decades: how to feed the world without costing the Earth. I am interested in what food we eat, and how and where we produce it, particularly in the degree to which we should separate or integrate food production with conservation of biodiversity and the wider environment. These decisions have profound consequences on what landscapes look like, how people interact with them, and what they mean to people. From the Yorkshire Dales to the Maasai Mara, landscapes, the nature they include, and people’s relationships with them are fundamental to the cultures, identities, and languages they support.
Gise Tomé Lourido: As a sociophonetician, I am interested in how accents vary, how we adapt to different accents, and how biases against people’s accents can lead to inequalities. I have worked on English, Galician and have contributed to the documentation of the sound system of two Modern South Arabian languages. I am the Director of Language@Leeds, a University-wide network for the interdisciplinary study of language, of which CELCE is an affiliated centre. I am keen to support CELCE and continue to explore opportunities for collaboration.