People — Himalayan Diversity Institute

Staff Members

Co-Director
Dr Yankee Modi is one of the world’s foremost community linguists, representing the Milang community of Holon Village in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Previously Assistant Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Modi completed her PhD thesis A Grammar of Milangin 2017 at the University of Berne under supervision of Em. Prof. Dr. George van Driem, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Pāṇini Award.
The CCLD has grown around Modi’s collaborations with Mark W. Post, which began with a fieldtrip to Peki-Modi village in 2008. Co-Director of the CCLD, Modi is also a Research Associate at the University of Sydney Department of Linguistics.

Co-Director
Mark W. Post is a linguist specializing in the languages of mainland Asia, with a special focus on Indigenous languages of the Eastern Himalayan region.
He is author and/or editor of 10 books, including A Grammar of Galo, The Tangam Language, A Galo-English Dictionary, Language and Culture in Northeast India and Beyond, Ethnolinguistic Prehistory of the Eastern Himalaya and 5 volumes of the North East Indian Linguistics book series, in addition to dozens of academic papers.
Beyond traditional research, Post has been actively involved in community language work in the Eastern Himalayan region for about 20 years, through partnerships with the Galo Language Development Committee, the Apatani Language Development Committee, and the Milang Welfare Society.
The CCLD has grown out of his collaboration with Yankee Modi, with whom he co-founded Training and Resources for Indigenous Community Linguists in 2015.
Post is currently Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Sydney and President of the Himalayan Diversity Institute.

Associate Academic Director
Dr. Kellen Parker van Dam is a linguist specializing in the languages of the Indo-Burmese border region, working closely with members of the Tangsa, Nocte, Wancho and Khiamniungan communities since 2015. He began working with Trans-Himalayan speaking communities in 2009 with the documentation of oral literature in China & Taiwan.
He completed his MA in linguistics in 2014 at National Tsing Hua University, and his PhD in 2018 at La Trobe University, and continues work on documentation and historical linguistics.
He is currently managing editor of Languages and Peoples of the Eastern Himalayan Region, a regular special issue of the journal Himalayan Linguistics. Dr. van Dam has been involved in Training and Resources for Indigenous Community Linguists since 2019. He is an Assistant Professor in the Chair for Multilingual Computational Linguistics at the University of Passau in Germany.

Associate Program Director
Dr Zilpha Modi is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Arunachal Institute of Tribal Studies in Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh, India. She holds an MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University, an MPhil from Oxford University and a PhD from Rajiv Gandhi University, and has conducted extensive fieldwork among Yobin (Lisu) communities in far eastern Arunachal Pradesh.
An Indigenous member of the Milang tribe and native speaker of Adi, Modi has served as Associate Program Director within Training and Resources for Indigenous Community Linguists since its inception in 2015.

Assistant Academic Coordinator
Thomas Flanagan Smith is an early-career linguist with experience in the languages of the Indo-Myanmar border regions. He has been involved with the Chin diaspora community in Indianapolis, USA, for several years, also leading research at the Burmese American Community Institute and helping produce educational materials for several South-Central Tibeto-Burman languages at the Chin Languages Research Project.
He is a recent graduate of the B.A. programs in both Linguistics and India Studies at Indiana University, where he conducted original research on Lutuv, an under-documented Chin language of Myanmar, and was on two National Science Foundation-funded teams working on Tibeto-Burman languages of Northeast India. Thomas joined the CCLD in 2024.

Research and Administrative Assistant
Aleisha Lam is a budding linguist with a passion for language documentation. She joined the CCLD-EH Project in 2025, working as both a Research Assistant and Administrative Assistant, where she supports ongoing research and archival work. In addition, she manages the project’s website and online presence.
Aleisha is currently completing a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney, majoring in Linguistics and Chinese Studies.

Resource Coordinator
Abu Lego has assisted with the logistical management of the HDI’s on-the-ground activities since its inception. A native member of the Adi (Padam) tribe, he is currently employed as Estate Officer at Rajiv Gandhi University , Arunachal Pradesh, India.

Ross Perlin is co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance and teaches linguistics at Columbia University. His most recent book is Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York.

Nick Enfield is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney. He has conducted long-term fieldwork on language, culture, cognition, and society, with an emphasis on mainland Southeast Asia, especially Laos. His books include A Grammar of Lao (2007), Dynamics of Human Diversity (2011), and The Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia (2021).

Carol Genetti has been documenting Himalayan languages since the 1980s and has especially worked on the Dolakha dialect of Newar. Synergistic activities include work as a founding editor of Himalayan Linguistics and starting InField/CoLang, an institute that provides collaborative training in language documentation and revitalization for linguists and speakers of endangered languages.
She is now a Professor of Linguistics at New York University Abu Dhabi, following 30 years on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Richard S. Post started his career in academia at the University of Wisconsin and MIT, but left to co-found two successful semiconductor equipment companies. He has since retired to do research in astronomy with an observatory in New Mexico, and also serves with his family as a founding director of the Oceanarium and Education Center in Maine, and as a director and investor in Cognizer.ai.

Daniel Kaufman is founding Co-Director of the Endangered Language Alliance and Associate Professor of Linguistics at Queens College, both based in New York City where he was born and raised. As a linguist, he specializes in Austronesian languages of insular Southeast Asia, having obtained a BA in linguistics from the University of the Philippines and his PhD from Cornell University. From 2018 to 2024, he was co-editor of Oceanic Linguistics, a journal devoted to the study of the indigenous languages of the Oceanic region and Island Southeast Asia. He has served as an HDI Board Member since its incorporation.