Here I provide selected information about my professional experiences. A complete list of my professional achievements can be found by clicking on CV below.
Research
My research interests include phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and language description. My expertise is in descriptive analysis of West Nilotic languages, and I am particularly interested in the Dinka-Nuer subgroup. My research is fieldwork based. A big part of it involves conducting data collection sessions with native speakers of languages under study. I have four years of experience conducting remote linguistic work with speakers of Nuer. I work via internet with speakers based in Kenya and South Sudan using WhatsApp and Zoom for communication. In addition to this somewhat modern approach, I am a keen traveler and prefer to go to the native locations whenever possible. In the past, I have spent nine consecutive months in Kenya working with the Nuer diaspora, five non-consecutive months in South Sudan conducting linguistic fieldwork with speakers of Reel, and four years in Indonesia living with a local tribe. I am also keen to develop language expertise in the native communities I work with. In the past, I have provided training to speakers of Dinka, Reel and Nuer in linguistic field methods, including conducting elicitation sessions with native speakers, recording data for the purposes of phonetic analysis, transcription, and translation.
My previous research includes work towards description of three West Nilotic languages – Nuer (for my PhD), Reel (for my MSc by Research) and Shilluk (for my M.A. Hons). I hold a PhD in Linguistics from University of Surrey (Surrey Morphology Group) as well as MA (Hons) and MScR in Linguistics from the University of Edinburgh.
I am currently employed as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Edinburgh. I work as part of a Leverhulme-funded research project titled ‘Suprasegmentals in three West Nilotic languages’ together with Bert Remijsen and Mirella Blum. For this project, I focus on suprasegmental phenomena in Nuer – a West Nilotic language spoken in South Sudan and Ethiopia.
At Edinburgh, we have a unique environment to study West Nilotic languages with a number of specialists working in parallel. Click here for our dedicated website.
Prior to starting my work at the University of Edinburgh, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Surrey Morphology Group (University of Surrey) working on Nuer lexicon. The output of this work together with a number of colleagues at Surrey Morphology Group is Nuer Lexicon website.
My work on Nuer together with the Surrey Morphology Group continues to the present day. We have recently been awarded funding for an impact project entitled Nuer Literacy Initiative to produce literacy materials for Nuer in collaboration with African Storybook.
In addition to my interest in West Nilotic languages, I have a keen interest in Austronesian and Australian Aboriginal languages. So far my interest in Austronesian languages did not go further than learning Malay and reading around, but I remain hopeful that one day I will get a chance to study languages of that family. As for the Australian Aboriginal languages, I have a more solid footing there, as I have had a pleasure to work as a research fellow on Erich Round’s project investigating aspects of phonology of Australian Aboriginal languages.
Publications, manuscripts and presentations
Reid, Tatiana (accepted, minor revisions). JIPA’s illustration of the IPA: Nuer.
Reid, Tatiana (under review). Vowel alternations in Nuer.
Reid, Tatiana and Bert Remijsen (ms.). The Floating Suprasegmental Component in Nuer.
Reid, Tatiana (2020). Nuer, a West Nilotic language of South Sudan and Ethiopia. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/eeb1f99f-81ad-4e7b-b3d4-8813631f0b27.
Bond, Oliver, Tatiana Reid, Irina Monich & Matthew Baerman. 2020. Nuer Lexicon. www.nuerlexicon.com. [An online dictionary of Nuer].
Reid, Tatiana (2019). The phonology and morphology or the Nuer verb. PhD thesis. University of Surrey.
Baerman, M., I.V. Monich and T. Reid (2019). Nominal inflection classes in verbal paradigms. Morphology, 29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-019-09342-5 [last accessed 29/04/2019].
Reid, Tatiana (2010). Aspects of phonetics, phonology and morphophonology of Thok Reel. MScR dissertation. University of Edinburgh.
Reid, Tatiana (2009). Suprasegmentals in Shilluk nominal morphophonology. M.A. dissertation. University of Edinburgh.
Selected invited and peer-reviewed talks
Reid, Tatiana (2022). Untangling the origins of the floating suprasegmental component in Nuer. ECR panel, The Philological Society. Online. 2 December. Available to view: https://youtu.be/pDweOnkDqG0
Reid, Tatiana (2022). Models for building relationships and refining approaches for collaborating with indigenous communities: Reporting on five years of online work with the Nuer. Language Documentation and Archiving conference, ELAR, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Berlin, Germany, 5 October. Available to view: https://youtu.be/LFjAq0Y7PEE
Reid, Tatiana (2021). On the nature of floating suprasegmental component in Lou Nuer. 10th World Congress of African Linguistics, online (Leiden University, Holland). 7-12 June. Available to view: https://youtu.be/dIP7u2zJ4jY
Reid, Tatiana (2017). Morphological stratification in Nuer: vowel and voice quality. Invited talk at Université Paris 8, Sciences du langage. 15 November.
Reid, Tatiana and Matthew Baerman (2017). Vowels in Nuer morphophonology (the case of transitive verbs). The 13th Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, The University of Addis Ababa. 4 May.
Reid, Tatiana, Irina Monich Matthew Baerman, Oliver Bond and Bert Remijsen (2016). Nuer morphophonology: The verbal paradigm. P-workshop, University of Edinburgh. 2 June.
Reid, Tatiana (2014). Tone in Thok Reel. ILCAA 50 years. Information Structure in Africa, with and international workshop on Nilotic Linguistics. Kyoto University, Japan. 5 October.
Reid, Tatiana (2011). Phonetics and phonology of Thok Reel. Department of African Studies, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russia. February.
Reid, Tatiana (2009). Language and Identity: The Atuot language of Dinka? Language in Context Research Group. The University of Edinburgh, U.K. October.
Selected Research Grants
2010-2012. The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme. Small grant for fieldwork in Southern Sudan
2010. The British Institute in Eastern Africa. Minor research grant for fieldwork in Southern Sudan
Linguistic Fieldwork
2017-22 Nuer (nus) data collection via WhatsApp and Zoom with speakers in Kenya (5 years)
2016-17 Nuer (nus) data collection in Nairobi, Kenya (9 months)
2015-16 Nuer (nus) data collection in London, U.K. (13 months)
2011 Reel (atu) data collection in Rumbek, South Sudan (this fieldwork was cut short due to an unsafe situation in the region)
2010 Reel (atu) data collection in Rumbek, South Sudan (2 months)
2009 Reel (atu) data collection in Juba, South Sudan (2 months)
2008 Shilluk (shk) data collection in Edinburgh, U.K. (3 months)
English