The CCLD-EH Team

  • Assistant Academic Coordinator

    Thomas Flanagan Smith is an early-career linguist with experience in the languages of the Indo-Myanmar border regions. He has been involved with the Chin diaspora community in Indianapolis, USA, for several years, also leading research at the Burmese American Community Institute and helping produce educational materials for several South-Central Tibeto-Burman languages at the Chin Languages Research Project.

    He is a recent graduate of the B.A. programs in both Linguistics and India Studies at Indiana University, where he conducted original research on Lutuv, an under-documented Chin language of Myanmar, and was on two National Science Foundation-funded teams working on Tibeto-Burman languages of Northeast India. Thomas joined the CCLD in 2024.

  • Associate Program Coordinator

    Dr Zilpha Modi is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Arunachal Institute of Tribal Studies in Rajiv Gandhi University, Arunachal Pradesh, India. She holds an MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University, an MPhil from Oxford University and a PhD from Rajiv Gandhi University, and has conducted extensive fieldwork among Yobin (Lisu) communities in far eastern Arunachal Pradesh.

    An Indigenous member of the Milang tribe and native speaker of Adi, Modi has served as Associate Program Director within Training and Resources for Indigenous Community Linguists since its inception in 2015. 

  • Research Assistant / Administrative Assistant

    Aleisha Lam is an emerging linguist with a passion for language documentation. She joined the CCLD-EH Project in 2025, working as both a Research Assistant and Administrative Assistant, where she supports ongoing research and archival work. In addition, she manages the project’s website and online presence.

    Aleisha is currently completing a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Sydney, majoring in Linguistics and Chinese Studies.

  • Co-Director

    Dr Yankee Modi is one of the world’s foremost community linguists, representing the Milang community of Holon Village in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Previously Assistant Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Modi completed her PhD thesis A Grammar of Milang in 2017 at the University of Berne under supervision of Em. Prof. Dr. George van Driem, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Pāṇini Award.

    The CCLD has grown around Modi’s collaborations with Mark W. Post, which began with a fieldtrip to Peki-Modi village in 2008. Co-Director of the CCLD, Modi is also a Research Associate at the University of Sydney Department of Linguistics.

  • Associate Academic Director

    Dr. Kellen Parker van Dam is a linguist specializing in the languages of the Indo-Burmese border region, working closely with members of the Tangsa, Nocte, Wancho and Khiamniungan communities since 2015. He began working with Trans-Himalayan speaking communities in 2009 with the documentation of oral literature in China & Taiwan.

    He completed his MA in linguistics in 2014 at National Tsing Hua University, and his PhD in 2018 at La Trobe University, and continues work on documentation and historical linguistics.

    He is currently managing editor of Languages and Peoples of the Eastern Himalayan Region, a regular special issue of the journal Himalayan Linguistics. Dr. van Dam has been involved in Training and Resources for Indigenous Community Linguists since 2019. He is an Assistant Professor in the Chair for Multilingual Computational Linguistics at the University of Passau in Germany.