Arienne Dwyer
Arienne Dwyer is an American linguist, anthropologist and educator. A Professor Emerita at the University of Kansas, she has been a professor of Linguistic Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology since 2001.
Early life, family and education
Arienne Dwyer is the daughter of flutist Doriot Anthony Dwyer and a descendant of women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony.She earned her PhD in 1996 in Altaic and Chinese Linguistics at the University of Washington. She was a Humboldt postdoctoral research fellow and Volkswagen-DOBES grantee at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
Career
Dwyer has been a professor of Linguistic Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas since 2001. She is also an affiliate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington. In 2010 she co-founded KU's Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities, and co-directed it until 2018.Dwyer conducts research into the languages and cultures of Inner and Central Asia, especially languages in the Turkic, Sinitic, and Mongolic families. She has also published pedagogical and linguistic materials for the Uyghur language.
Her research is notable in arguing for the areal significance of Chinese Inner Asia as a Sprachbund, a region of language convergence. Her research also looks at issues of language documentation, Open Access and language ideology. In 2014, her work led to her being named a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Dwyer received National Science Foundation (NSF) funding for and directed Institute on Collaborative Language Research, inviting Carlos Nash to be co-director. CoLang is an international training workshop in in situ language documentation supported by the NSL, convening in even years.
Since 2010, her collaborative work has focused on sharing analyzed language resources, including a pilot website Interactive Inner Asia, which provided some samples of language materials based on Dwyer's VW-DOBES project, and the Uyghur 2.0 website, which includes the Uyghur Light Verbs project, and the Analyzing Turki Manuscripts Online project.