Tjeerd de Graaf.
Since 1990, Tjeerd de Graaf, associate professor of phonetics at Groningen University (the Netherlands) until 2003, has specialised in the phonetic aspects of Ethnolinguistics. In 1990, he made his first fieldwork trip with a Japanese expedition to the minority peoples of Sakhalin. Since then, he has contributed to various research projects on endangered languages and the use of sound archives related to the ethnic minorities in Russia. This was done in co-operation with colleagues in the Russian Federation and Japan. Most of these projects were financially supported by special grants from the European Union and the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO).
In 1998, Tjeerd de Graaf received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of St. Petersburg for his work in the field of ethnolinguistics. Since 2002, he has been a board member of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (Great Britain) and a research fellow at the Frisian Academy, which co-ordinates research on European minorities—in particular the language, history and culture of Frisian, one of the lesser used languages of Europe.
In the first half of 2003, he spent a semester at the University of St. Petersburg as visiting professor. In 2004 and 2005, Tjeerd de Graaf worked as guest researcher at the Slavic Research Center of Hokkaido University (Japan).
