Our Mission

The Three Rivers Language Center serves nondominant language communities in their efforts to pursue linguistic rights and the use of their languages. We do this through research, education, training, policy work, and advising governments, nongovernmental agencies, and civil society organizations.

Center Director Bio

Dr. Shannon Bischoff

Dr. Bischoff completed a double major in Anthropology and Linguistics for his PhD work at the University of Arizona, with a minor in computational linguistics. He was a research fellow at the University of Tokyo and has conducted post-graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania. His research encompasses computational linguistics, formal linguistics, language documentation and conservation, language rights and human rights, pedagogical linguistics, and linguistic anthropology.

He has secured over $2 million in funding for his work, including seven National Science Foundation grants, one National Endowment for the Humanities grant, and two grants from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. His work has been cited in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, The Oxford Handbook of Language Attrition, the Routledge Handbook of Linguistics, the Routledge Handbook of Syntax, The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, The Languages and Linguistics of North America, Second Language Learning Theories, and the Handbook of Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity, among others. Dr. Bischoff's publications span a number of presses including Oxford University Press, MIT Press, and De Gruyter Mouton, as well as Q1 journals.

He has presented as an invited speaker at the United Nations, UNESCO, the British Council, and Cambridge University, among others. He is a member of several scholarly societies including the Comparative & International Education Society, the Linguistic Society of America, the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas, and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. He has received awards for his teaching and research, including nominations for the Franz Boas Prize and winning the Ken Hale Prize with his research team in 2018. Dr. Bischoff is actively involved in UNESCO's International Decade of Indigenous Languages initiatives and has taught at institutions such as the American Indian Language Development Institute and The Institute on Collaborative Language Research.

Meet the Team

Check out the active researchers and practitioners who work with the Three Rivers Language Center.

If you are interested in joining our team, contact us: [email protected]