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Mark Turin

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Mark Turin
Turin lecturing at Dartmouth College, February 2013
Born (1973-10-27) 27 October 1973 (age 51)
London, United Kingdom
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge, B.A.
Leiden University, PhD
Occupation(s)linguist, anthropologist, broadcaster
Known forDirector, Digital Himalaya, World Oral Literature Project, Yale Himalaya Initiative and presenting on BBC Radio

Mark Turin (born 1973) is a British anthropologist, linguist and radio broadcaster who specializes in the Himalayas and the Pacific Northwest. From 2014-2018, he served as Chair of the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program and Acting Co-Director of the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is Associate Professor of Anthropology and director of the Digital Himalaya Project.

Biography

Turin was born in London, United Kingdom into an Italian-Dutch family. His father, Duccio Turin, was a UN diplomat and chief architect of the Palestinian refugee camps, and his mother, Hannah Oorthuys, is a graphic designer and therapist. His half-brother, Luca Turin, is a biophysicist and writer with a long-standing interest in the sense of smell, perfumery, and the fragrance industry. After completing his undergraduate studies in Anthropology and Archaeology with First Class Honours from the University of Cambridge (1995), Turin prepared a grammatical description and lexicon of the previously undocumented Thangmi (Thami) language spoken in Nepal and northern India for his doctoral research through the Himalayan Languages Project at the University of Leiden. From May 2007 until May 2008, he served as Chief of the Translation and Interpretation Unit in the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN).

Turin continues to direct the Digital Himalaya Project, which he co-established in December 2000, based jointly the University of Cambridge and the University of British Columbia. In 2009, he established up the World Oral Literature Project supporting the documentation and preservation of oral literatures and endangered cultural traditions, affiliated to the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Turin was elected to a Fellowship at Hughes Hall, Cambridge in March 2011 and made a Quondam Fellow in March 2014.

From August 2011 to June 2014, Turin held the posts of Lecturer and Associate Research Scientist, and the founding Program Director of the Yale Himalaya Initiative at the MacMillan Center for International & Area Studies, Yale University. From 2013, together with Sienna Craig, he has served as Editor of Himalaya, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies. His BBC Radio 4 series entitled Our Language in Your Hands on linguistic diversity and language endangerment in Nepal, South Africa and New York aired in December 2012; and his second series On Language Location on the linguistic landscape of Bhutan and Burma/Myanmar aired in October 2014 on BBC Radio 4 and in March 2015 on the BBC World Service. Turin's work has been recognized by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and the Killam Trust.

Publications

Books

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Mark Turin
  • Turin, Mark (2012). A Grammar of Thangmi with an Ethnolinguistic Introduction to the Speakers and their Culture. Brill's Tibetan Studies Library, Languages of the Greater Himalayan Region. Vol. 6. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-15526-8.
  • Evans, Christopher; Pettigrew, Judith; Kromchain Tamu, Yarjung; Turin, Mark (2009). Grounding Knowledge/Walking Land: Archaeological Research and Ethno-historical Identity in Central Nepal. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. ISBN 978-1-902937-50-2. Archived from the original on 2 October 2012.
  • Turin, Mark (2007). Linguistic Diversity and the Preservation of Endangered Languages: A Case Study from Nepal. Talking Points. ISBN 978-92-9115-055-7. Archived from the original on 26 July 2011. Retrieved 2 November 2012.
  • Turin, Mark; Thami, Bir Bahadur (2004). Nepali – Thami – English Dictionary. Kathmandu: Martin Chautari. ISBN 99933-812-4-1.

Edited volumes

Further reading

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