Dr Mark Turin

Mark Turin is an anthropologist, linguist and occasional radio presenter, and an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. He is cross-appointed between the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and the Department of Anthropology.

Before joining UBC, Dr. Turin was an Associate Research Scientist with the South Asian Studies Council at Yale University, and the Founding Program Director of the Yale Himalaya Initiative. Dr. Turin previously worked as a Research Associate at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Turin has also held research appointments at Cornell and Leipzig universities, as well as the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology in Sikkim, India. From 2007 to 2008, he served as Chief of Translation and Interpretation at the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN).

Turin directs both the World Oral Literature Project, an urgent global initiative to document and make accessible endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record, and the Digital Himalaya Project which he co-founded in 2000 as a platform to make multi-media resources from the Himalayan region widely available online.

Turin writes and teaches on language reclamation, revitalization, documentation and conservation; language mapping, policies, politics and language rights; orality, archives, digital tools and technology. Indigenous methodologies and decolonial practice inform and shape his teaching and research. He is the author or co-author of four books, the editor of 12 volumes, and he edits a series on oral literature. Mark is a regular BBC presenter on issues of linguistic diversity and language endangerment.