Ross Perlin is a linguist, writer, and translator focused on exploring and supporting linguistic diversity. He has been ELA’s Co-Director since 2013, managing research projects on mapmaking, documentation, policy, and public programming for urban linguistic diversity. Himalayan languages are a focus — for his PhD in Linguistics at the University of Bern, Ross created a trilingual dictionary, a corpus of recordings, and a descriptive grammar of Trung, an endangered language of southwest China, based on several years of fieldwork. He has also written on language, culture, and politics for The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s, and elsewhere, and published a book on unpaid work and youth economics (Intern Nation). He also teaches linguistics at Columbia.