Patrick HEINRICH is Professor of Japanese Studies at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, where he also teaches Okinawan Studies. Before joining Ca’ Foscari in 2014, he taught at universities in Germany and Japan for many years. His main research interests focus on language endangerment and communication in the city. His latest co-edited works include "Ideologies of Communication in Japan" (Multilingual Matters, 2025) and "Decolonizing Arabic Sociolinguistics" (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). He is also co-editor of the "Handbook of Ryukyuan Linguistics" (De Gruyter Mouton, 2015) and has been the co-founder of the Ryukyuan Heritage Language Society. He is a honorary member of the Foundation of Endangered Languages and received the annual Tokugawa Munemasa Award from the Japanese Society of Sociolinguistic Sciences in 2009.

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Lianqun BAO is Professor at Oita University in Japan. Her main research interests focus on minority languages in northern China. She serves as the Secretary-General/Vice Chairperson of the International Association of Urban Language Studies and an editorial board member of "East Asian Social Education Research". She received the Outstanding Paper Award at the 5th Asian Future Conference in 2020. She received also JSPS KAKENHI grant to publish "Manchu Folk Tales: The Manchu Language and Its Characteristics in San Jia Zi Village, Heilongjiang Province" (2023, Sangen-sha) and "Language Contact and Language Variation: A Case Study of the Dorbed Mongolian Community Language in Heilongjiang Province, China" (2011, Gendaitosho). She is a editor of "Language Policy and Language Inheritance in Modern China" (Volumes 1-7, 2013-2023, Sangen-sha).

Seng-hian LAU is a dedicated scholar in the field of Taiwanese language. Currently, he serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages, and Literature at National Taiwan Normal University. His research interests encompass comparative syntax and the syntax-pragmatics interface. Lau's commitment to the Taiwanese language extends beyond his academic pursuits. He actively participates in developing the proficiency test and grammar resources for Taiwanese, under the supervision of the Ministry of Education (Taiwan) and the National Academy for Educational Research. His dedication to promoting the language is evident in his publication of two Taiwanese grammar books for popular science purposes and a Taiwanese learning book in English. Furthermore, he leads a team responsible for creating TaiGiddy, an international gamified interactive Taiwanese learning platform. All of these practical experiences bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world applications in language preservation.

ITO Masako is Professor at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University, where she teaches modern Vietnamese history. Her main research interest is the history of relations between ethnic minorities and the Vietnamese state, and she has conducted field research in the Tay and Nung regions on the Sino-Vietnamese border. Her recent research topic (2022-24) focuses on Vietnam's minority language policies and the actual language use situations. Her first book, "Creation of Ethnicity and the Nation-State Vietnam: Modern History of the Tay-Nung People in the Vietnamese-Chinese Border Region" (in Japanese, Sangensha, 2003), won The Prize of the Japan Society of Southeast Asian History in 2004. Other books include "Politics of Ethnic Classification in Vietnam" (Trans Pacific Press & Kyoto University Press, 2013).

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Jeffry (Jeff) GAYMAN is Professor at the Hokkaido University Research Faculty of Media and Communication and Hokkaido University Graduate School of Education, where he teaches educational anthropology. Originally hailing from Alaska in the United States, Jeff has been living and working in Japan for over thirty years, approximately twenty of those in support of the Ainu people. Along with accompanying Ainu on three occasions to the World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Education, he has published chapters on the interface between Indigenous knowledge, structure and agency in the "Routledge Handbook of Race and Ethnicity in Asia" (Routledge, 2021), "International Education and the Creation of Community" (『コミュニティーの創造と国際教育―日本国際教育学会３０周年記念論集』Akashi Press, 2021, in Japanese), and "The Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge" (Routledge 2020), and other volumes, as well as articles in "Intercultural Education" and "the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs". His current interest and research focuses on the nexus of academia, policy and indigenous and ethnic minority empowerment, and how academics can use their position to work with indigenous and ethnic minority groups to alter discourses which influence policy and lead to minority empowerment.

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Sachiyo FUJITA-ROUND is Specially Appointed Associate Professor at Daito Bunka University, Tokyo. She is a sociolinguist and has studied bilingualism in childhood for three decades. Since 2012, she has conducted fieldwork in the Miyako Islands, investigating Japanese-Miyakoan bilingualism. Her chapter "Bilingualism and bilingual education in Japan" was published in the Routledge Handbook of Japanese Sociolinguistics (Eds. P. Heinrich and Y. Ohara, 2019) and the paper, "Language revitalization and classroom" appeared in Languages , 8 (1), 4 (2023). Her current JSPS KAKENHI research is entitled, "Research praxis in language education for the revitalization of Ryukyuan languages: transitioning from language endangerment to language transmission". In collaboration with research colleagues, associates in the Southern Ryukyu islands, a video artist, a film director, a photographer, a web designer, and a book designer, this team creates video and digital resources of the vernacular endangered languages and also documents these languages in folktale picture books for future language learners. Research platform: YouTube page “Live Multilingually Project”, https://bit.ly/4hMorNz / website https://fujitaround.com

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BAYARMEND Borjigin was born in 1959 in Jinfeng, Inner Mongolia. He earned his undergraduate degree in Mongolian Language and Literature from Inner Mongolia University between 1978 and 1982, followed by a Master of Arts degree from 1982 to 1985. From 1986 to 1988, he studied at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and later completed his Ph.D. at Inner Mongolia University. From 2000 to 2005, he served as the Director of the Mongolian Language and Literature Institute at Inner Mongolia University, and from 2001 to 2016, he was the Dean of the Mongolian Studies Institute. He is currently the Director and a Professor at the Mongolian Studies Center of Inner Mongolia University, holding a Ph.D. in Literature.

In addition to his academic roles, Bayarmend has held several prominent positions, including Counselor to the People's Government of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Honorary President of the Society for the Study of Mongolian Language and Literature of China, and President of the China Mongolian Studies Association. He has also served on the Teaching and Guidance Committee and the Ethnic Education Committee of the Chinese Ministry of Education, as well as on the Ethnic Language Special Committee of the Nationalities Affairs Committee of China. Additionally, he was the Deputy Director of the Standard Language Committee for Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Bayarmend's expertise lies in linguistics, particularly in experimental phonetics, sociolinguistics, and medieval Mongolian. He has authored 22 books, including "Studies on the Baling Dialect", "Mongolian Dialects and Mongolian Culture", "Experimental Phonetic Studies of Mongolian", and "Acoustic Comparison of Mongolian Dialects", as well as three textbooks, such as "Mongolian at University". He has published 106 academic papers in Mongolian, Chinese, Japanese, and English.

Throughout his distinguished career, Bayarmend has received several prestigious awards, including the "Special Contribution Award" from the People's Government of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 2004, the First Prize for Educational Achievement in 2009, the "Kubilai Gold Prize" from the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in 2012, and the "Order of the Arctic Star" from the Mongolian government in 2023, the highest honor awarded to foreign nationals.