Mark Turin is a socio-cultural anthropologist 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. He currently serves as the Interim Editor of the journal Pacific Affairs.

From 2014-2018, Dr. Turin served as Chair of the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program and from 2016-2018, as Acting Co-Director of the University’s new Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. For academic year 2019-2010, he held a Killam Faculty Research Fellowship and served as a Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC. 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. Prior to his appointment at Yale, Dr. Turin worked a Research Associate at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. At UBC, Dr. Turin is an Associate Member of the Department of Asian Studies an Affiliate Member of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. Mark 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).

Mark 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. He is also the principal investigator for the Relational Lexicography project through which a group of aligned researchers are developing a framework and toolkit for collaborative, community-informed dictionary work with marginalized languages. Together with Sienna Craig, Mark edited Himalaya, the longest running, open access, interdisciplinary and peer-reviewed journal of Himalayan studies from 2013-2017. For over twenty years, Mark’s regional focus has been the Himalayan region (particularly Nepal, northern India and Bhutan), and more recently, the Pacific Northwest. Mark is very privileged to have had the opportunity to work in collaborative partnership with members of the Thangmi-speaking communities of eastern Nepal and Darjeeling district in India since 1996, and since 2014 with members of the Heiltsuk First Nation through a Heiltsuk Language Mobilization Partnership in which UBC is a member.

Mark 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, three travel guides, 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. Mark was one of three principal investigators on a major five-year collaborative research project supported by the Arcadia Fund to document and protect Bhutan’s oral traditions, and is currently an active Co-Investigator on a Partnership Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada entitled First Nations Languages in the 21st Century: Looking Back, Looking Forward. In addition, together with colleagues at the Yale School Forestry & Environmental Studies, he has the role of Co-Investigator on a NASA-funded grant on Urban growth, land-use change, and growing vulnerability in the Greater Himalaya mountain range. Mark is honoured to have served on the Advisory Board of SAPIENS and as a member of the Steering Committee of UBC Language Sciences.

My research interests can be grouped into four main clusters.

First, as an anthropologist, I have had the incredible privilege to work in collaborative partnership with communities in Himalayan region and more recently the Pacific Northwest. My work is informed by a background in ethnographic methods, anthropological theory and field linguistics. In addition to Nepal, where I have worked since 1992, my interest in the Himalayan region has taken me to Bhutan, where I co-directed a 5-year collaborative research project to document the endangered oral traditions of the nation; the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, where I researched contemporary Nepali wage labour migrants; and also to Sikkim, where I directed the first modern linguistic survey of this small Indian state in partnership with the local government and a Sikkimese research institute. I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work in partnership with members of the Thangmi-speaking communities of eastern Nepal and Darjeeling district in India since 1996, and since 2015 with members of the Heiltsuk First Nation through a Language and Culture Mobilization Partnership in which UBC is a founding member.

Second, emerging out of these long-term collaborative partnerships, I have become increasingly interested in how insights derived from academic research can inform policy and practice. Since 2003, I have worked as an occasional consultant for the World Bank, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and various UN agencies. Projects have included drafting the first inclusive multilingual education policy for Nepal, advising the Government of Nepal on the linguistic rights of its citizens and assessing the impact of sustainable ecotourism in Tibet. In 2007, I was asked to create and direct the Translation and Interpretation Unit in the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), a special political mission mandated by the UN Security Council to support Nepal’s peace process.

Third, a central component of my life as a scholar is designing and directing larger research projects and initiatives. I co-founded the Digital Himalaya Project in 2000, which has since then developed from its origins as an academic research project into an integrated, open scholarly portal for connecting knowledge about the Himalayan region. I have worked as a fieldwork coordinator and anthropologist on a large, international and multi-disciplinary research project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, jointly based at Leipzig University and Tribhuvan University in Nepal. From 2009, I have directed the World Oral Literature Project, tying together my enthusiasm for fundamental research at the intersection of anthropology and linguistics, a commitment to building a wider scholarly community through supporting the research of others, and a passion for engaged anthropology that reaches an audience beyond the academy. Since 2019, I have served as the principal investigator for the Relational Lexicography project through which we are developing a framework and toolkit for collaborative, community-informed dictionary work with marginalized languages.

Finally, I am committed to innovation in teaching methods and to developing research partnerships with students. In my teaching, I seek to create a rich instructional experience for students at all levels, often supported by digital tools and instructional technology. In recognition of this, I was nominated as the Anthropology Associate for academic year 2009-2010 by C-SAP, the national subject network for Sociology, Anthropology and Politics funded by the UK Funding Councils for Higher Education.

Please click on the link below to view my publications organized by category (books, edited collections, journal articles & book chapters, etc.)

http://markturin.arts.ubc.ca/publications/

I am fortunate to have received competitive research grants from many organizations in the course of my career, including but not limited to the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

In addition, I have been nominated for and received the following awards:

UBC Dean of Arts Mentorship Award (2023)

Open Scholarship Award, Honourable Mention for the Digital Himalaya Project (2021)

UBC Open Education Resource Champion / Leader in Open Learning (2020)

UBC Wall Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (2019-2020)

UBC Killam Faculty Research Fellowship (2018-2019)

UBC Green College Leading Scholar (2014-2016)

Yvonne and Jack McCredie Fellowship at Yale in Instructional Technology for excellence and innovation in undergraduate teaching (2013)

United Kingdom Higher Education Academy Associate Award for Anthropology (2009)

Mark Turin is an Associate Professor of Anthropology. From 2014-2018, Dr. Turin served as Chair of the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program and from 2016-2018, as Acting Co-Director of the University’s new Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. His work focuses on language endangerment, reclamation and revitalization. He writes and teaches on ethnolinguistics, decolonial methodologies, digital archives and cultural heritage.

Graduate Supervision:

Current Students:

Maya Daurio (PhD)
Cheyanne Connell (PhD)

Past Students:

Yujie Ji (PhD)
Patrick Dowd (PhD)

Deanne Beier (MA)
Robert Hanks (MA)

Undergraduate Teaching:

Associate Professor, Linguistic/Sociocultural Anthropology 

Language endangerment, reclamation and revitalization; Indigeneity; decolonization; language ideology; linguistic policy & identity; oral traditions; digital ethnography & archives; the Himalayan region (particularly Nepal, northern India and Bhutan) and First Nations and Indigenous languages.