Eline Visser

Eline Visser is a Research Fellow at Uppsala University's Department of Linguistics, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundations. She specializes in the endangered languages of eastern Indonesia, particularly Kalamang (Papuan) and Uruangnirin (Austronesian), and leads the Mapping Bomberai project (2024-2026) documenting understudied languages of the Bomberai peninsula. Her work bridges academic research with community-led language preservation initiatives.

Her educational background includes:

• PhD in Linguistics from Lund University (2020), with a dissertation on Kalamang grammar

Visser's research centers on language documentation and typology, with deep expertise in Austronesian and Papuan languages of eastern Indonesia. She investigates grammatical relations, narrative structures, prosody, and language contact phenomena through rigorous fieldwork. Her methodological contributions include integrating legacy materials with new field data and developing mobile dictionary apps for community use. She actively engages with ethical considerations in language documentation and promotes digital tools for endangered language preservation.

Her publications from 2015-2025 reveal consistent focus on eastern Indonesian languages, particularly grammatical relations in Kalamang/Uruangnirin and methodological innovations in field linguistics. Key trends include the interplay between legacy data and new fieldwork, narrative analysis in Papuan languages, and applying computational approaches to language documentation. Her collaborative work spans syntax, phonology, and discourse analysis across diverse language families.

Her scientific recognition includes:

• Wenner-Gren Fellowship for the Mapping Bomberai project

Visser leads the Wenner-Gren-funded Mapping Bomberai project (2024-2026), supporting fieldwork on multiple Bomberai peninsula languages including Bedoanas, Erokwanas, Geser-Gorom, and Mbaham. She collaborates with researchers from Google on applying large language models to grammar reading and audio processing, and supports Wancho language documentation in India. Her community-oriented work includes developing mobile dictionary apps for Kalamang and Uruangnirin speakers.

She is an active member of the 'Serial Verb Constructions across modalities' research group at the University of Amsterdam and previously contributed to the 'Where does grammar come from?' group. Her earlier work included the ExSynOp project at UiT The Arctic University of Norway on Scandinavian prosody, demonstrating her cross-linguistic research scope.