HIMALAYAN LANGUAGES SYMPOSIUM
30 OCTOBER - 1 NOVEMBER 2026
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI
30 OCTOBER - 1 NOVEMBER 2026
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI
The Himalayan Languages Symposium is an annually convening, open scholarly forum for
scholars of Himalayan languages. Contributions are welcome on any language of the greater Himalayan region,
e.g. Burushaski, Kusunda, Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Iranian, Austroasiatic, Kradai, Andamanese, Nihali, Dravidian or any other language of the area.
In addition to linguistic presentations, contribution are also welcome from related disciplines such as history, anthropology,
archaeology and prehistory. The forum is secular and scholarly and not open to political or religious contributions.
Past Himalayan Languages Symposia:
HLS-28 was held in Eugene, Oregon
HLS-27 was held in Guwahati, India
HLS-26 was held in Paris, France
HLS-25 was held in Sydney, Australia
The list of past Himalayan Languages Symposia.
We are delighted to inform that the 29th Himalayan Languages Symposium
will be held at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi from October 30 to November 1, 2026, hosted by
the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. The Himalayan Languages Symposium is a multidisciplinary conference
that covers a broad range of topics of the Himalayan languages. As mentioned in the official website of Himalayan Languages Symposium
(http://www.himalayansymposium.org/),
contributions are welcome on any language of the greater Himalayan region, e.g. Burushaski, Kusunda, Tibeto-Burman, Indo-Iranian,
Austroasiatic, Kradai, Andamanese, Nihali, Dravidian etc. Contributions are also invited from related disciplines such as history,
anthropology, archaeology and prehistory focusing on the greater Himalayan region.This year at IIT Delhi, we will pay special attention
to the following areas of research in the Himalayan Languages:
We invite long abstracts for submission. Each abstract should be of maximum 2 A4 pages,
including all data, figures, and references. Each abstract will be blind peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers and acceptance
will be based on the recommendations of the reviewers. These abstracts will be archived in the conference
website. Deadline for abstract submission: March 10, 2026 March 17, 2026.
The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free
by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.
Please create an account using your official/ institutional email ID (preferably) and submit the title, and PDF of a two-page long
abstract in the system.
To access the submission portal click here.
To be updated once the Notification of Acceptance is out.
Ayesha Kidwai is a Professor of Linguistics at the Centre for Linguistics, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, with 27 years of academic experience in generative syntax and morphology, child language acquisition, field and descriptive linguistics, language politics, history of linguistics, bilingual Hindi–English translation, inclusion in higher education, and Partition studies. She has been honoured with the Infosys Prize in the Humanities (Theoretical Linguistics) and was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2023, and has served as Senior Editor of the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia and a visiting professor at institutions in India and abroad. Kidwai’s wide-ranging scholarship includes influential articles and books on South Asian linguistic theory and multilingual education.
Gwendolyn Hyslop is a Professor of Linguistics at The University of Sydney, where she conducts research in historical, comparative, and typological linguistics, with a strong focus on the documentation and analysis of lesser-studied languages of the Eastern Himalayas and beyond. She earned her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Oregon and has published widely on the grammar and tonal systems of Tibeto-Burman languages, including a major monograph on Kurtöp with Brill. Her work combines fieldwork, typology, and language history, and she has participated in international fellowships and research collaborations, while contributing to scholarship on language structures, sociolinguistics, and language documentation across Asia and other regions.
Priyankoo Sarmah is a Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT Guwahati), with a strong research focus on phonetics and speech science, including acoustic and articulatory analysis, speech perception, and language technology for under-resourced languages. His work engages extensively with South Asian and Tibeto-Burman languages, particularly in the areas of vowel systems, tone, prosody, and speech processing. He has published widely in leading peer-reviewed journals and is actively involved in interdisciplinary research collaborations. In addition to research, he contributes to teaching and academic leadership at the intersection of linguistics, cognition, and technology.
TBD
Humanities and Social Sciences Department,
5th Floor, Main Building, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Hauz Khas, New Delhi - 110016, India.
Email: hls29.iitd@gmail.com