HIMALAYAN LANGUAGES SYMPOSIUM

30 OCTOBER - 1 NOVEMBER 2026

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI

About Himalayan Language Symposium

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.

Invited Speakers

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.

Carol Genetti is a Professor of Linguistics and specialises in Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas. Her scholarship spans several subfields of linguistics, including language documentation, syntax, historical linguistics, and prosody, with a particular interest in how linguistic structures emerge from everyday language use. She is the founding director of InField/CoLang and the author of A Grammar of Dolakha Newar and the textbook How Languages Work. She currently serves as Vice Provost for Graduate and Postdoctoral Programs at New York University Abu Dhabi and has previously held major academic leadership roles at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Call for Papers

29th Himalayan Languages Symposium (HLS-29)

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:

Phonetics and Phonology
Cognitive Linguistics
Syntax
Semantics
Morphology
Anthropological linguistics
Computational linguistics
Corpus linguistics
Discourse analysis
Pragmatics
Psycholinguistics
Language documentation
Sign languages
Sociolinguistics
Lexicography
Linguistic typology
Machine translation
Endangered languages
Language Technology Development
Natural Language Processing
Writing systems and typography
Language and Politics
Migration pattern of the greater Himalayan region
History of linguistic research in the Himalayan region
Speech Technology
Second Language Acquisition

Submissions

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.

Important Dates

Call for Abstract Open: 19 January 2026
Abstract Submission Deadline: ~~March 10, 2026~~ March 17, 2026.
Notification of Acceptance: May 15, 2026
Registration Open: TBD
Registration Deadline: TBD
Conference (HLS-29): 30 October - 1 November 2026

Registration

To be updated soon.

Program Schedule

TBD

Instructions

Oral Presentations

Oral presenters will have 15 minutes to present their work and 5 minutes for questions and answers.

Poster Presentations

Posters should adhere to A1 size (59.4 cm X 84.1 cm). You can choose the orientation according to your specific needs.
Make sure that the poster displays the title of the paper, name(s), affiliation, and contact information of all authors.
Make sure the poster is readable from 2-3 feet away. We would recommend that no font should be less than font-size 18pt (including font used in labels and axes of various charts or images/ diagrams etc.)
Replace the dummy logos on top-right with your lab/ research group's / partners logo. If there is no such logo, you should remove the dummy logos.
Poster templates:
- Poster Template Portrait
- Poster Template Landscape

Committees

Convenors

Event Organizers

Alokesh Majumder
Anujeema Saikia
Gyandeep Chetia
Hariprasad Doley
Joynal Ali
Marina Laltlinzo Infimate
Ojaswee Bhalla
Pratikshya Guru
Sagar Boro
Sharon Valui
Siddharth Misra
Therese Liam Tom
Zitaksyor Sonowal

Program Committee

Adam Levy (La Trobe University)
Aimee Lahaussois (CNRS)
Ankita Prasad (IIT Delhi)
Ashwini Vaidya (IIT Delhi)
Atul Kr. Ojha (University of Galway)
Ayesha Kidwai (JNU)
Bidisha Bhattacharje (IIIT-Hyderabad)
Chanchal Chaudhary (Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore)
Chandni Dutta (IIT Delhi)
D Mary Kim Haokip (Assam University Silchar)
David A Peterson (Dartmouth College)
Dimple Choudhury (Assam down town University)
Diti Bhadra (University of Minnesota)
George van Driem (University of Bern)
Hari Madhab Dr Ray (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Ian Joo (Otaru University of Commerce)
Ishani Guha (Amity University Noida)
Kailadbou Daimai (Utkal University of Culture)
Krishna Boro (Gauhati University)
Lalit Rajkumar (Manipur University)
Leena Dihingia (Gauhati University)
Linda Konnerth (University of Bern)
Luke Horo (Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages)
Mathieu Beaudouin (University of Cambridge)
Meiraba Takhellambam (Manipur University)
Mimi Kevichüsa Ezung (Nagaland University)
Monali Longmailai (Assam University)
Muhammad Zakaria (University of Bern)
Niharika Dutta (Gauhati University)
Nikhilesh Thirukovela (SRM University - AP)
Pamir Gogoi (Karya)
Pauthang Haokip (JNU)
Pavel Ozerov (University of Innsbruck)
Preeti Kumari (SRM University, Andhra Pradesh)
Samar Sinha (Sikkim University)
Samopriya Basu (Carleton University)
Sangsrgyas Tshering (Lanzhou University)
Sh Francis Monsang (Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur)
Sujoy Sarkar (Central Institute of Indian Languages)
Sweta Sinha (Indian Institute of Technology Patna)
Tanmoy Bhattacharya (University of Delhi)
Temsunungsang T (EFL University, Shillong campus)
Tim Bodt (Trinity College Dublin)
Viyazonuo Terhiija (Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati)
Wendy Lalhminghlui (University of Bern)

Contact

Contact Address

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