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Qualifications
MA (SOAS)
Email address
601339@soas.ac.uk
Thesis title
A case study of Master-Apprentice initiative with new speakers of Ryukyuan languages (Working Title)
Internal Supervisors
Dr Fabio Gygi, Professor Julia Sallabank & Dr Barbara Pizziconi

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I am an indigenous Ryukyuan researcher, born and raised in a minority Christian population in a village lying in the politically dominant region across the Ryukyus - Okinawa. I had an assimilated Japanese identity and a monolithic view on diverse Ryukyuan communities until I started visiting other Ryukyuan regions for my PhD research.

Several relocations to a larger city in Okinawa, Kyushu region in mainland Japan, Istanbul in Turkey, and London in England, searching for better opportunities for education and freedom; having Ryukyuan relatives in Tokyo and Osaka as well as in-law Turkish-Syrian and Arab-Kabyle families including political refugees; and my emerging Ryukyuan identity through my PhD research have made me interested in pluralistic identity of people who cross visible and invisible boundaries in the public eye.

I currently conduct collaborative autoethnography and participatory action research with new speakers of Ryukyuan languages to explore challenges of language acquisition in the context of non-standardized endangered languages as well as new speakers’ identities and what it means to be a citizen in sustainable Ryukyuan communities.

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  • discourse analysis
  • interdisciplinary collaboration
  • language acquisition/learning/teaching
  • language contact
  • linguistic anthropology
  • new speakers

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Email
601339@soas.ac.uk
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