Cooperation with Universities

For more than 25 years, SIL personnel have cooperated with Thai scholars at several universities, including Mahidol, Thammasat, Chulalongkorn, Payap, and Mae Fah Luang. At these universities, SIL personnel have:

• Taught courses to MA and PhD students in linguistics, anthropology, multilingual education, translation, and ethnomusicology.
• Cooperated with Thai scholars to survey and map Thailand’s languages, of which there are more than 70.
• Published research on the languages and cultures of Southeast Asia in scholarly journals in Thailand and internationally.
• Organized language and culture preservation workshops for minority communities.
• Produced computer fonts for minority languages.

Over the years, SIL members have been able to join and collaborate with Mahidol University professors and staff who are part of the Research Institute for Language and Culture of Asia (see picture below). In 2009, SIL and Payap University celebrated 20 years of formal cooperation that began with the Linguistic Department. A commerative booklet was published and a portion can be viewed here.

The David Thomas library, housed in SIL’s Regional office, serves researchers interested in Southeast Asian languages. SIL International also maintains the Ethnologue, an encyclopedic reference work cataloging all of the world’s known languages.