IKMAS Seminar Series No.12/2019

Biodata

Dr Kirk Person is the Director of External Affairs under the Mainland Southeast Asia section of SIL International based in Bangkok, Thailand. SIL International is an international non-governmental organisation focused on minority language issues. His current projects include collaboration with Save the Children on a Thai-as-a-Second-Language curriculum for migrant children and a book on multilingual education for UNICEF Thailand. He has conducted linguistic fieldwork in Thailand, Myanmar and China, and taught graduate linguistics courses at several Thai universities. He has represented SIL International to the Asia-Pacific Multilingual Education Working Group and the Thematic Working Group on Education for All (both hosted by UNESCO-Bangkok), and served on the Royal Institute of Thailand’s National Language Policy Drafting Committee. He is an advisor to the Patani Malay-Thai Multilingual Education Program, which received the 2016 UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize. He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Arlington, USA.