Notes on Contributors
Annika Tjuka holds a PhD in Linguistics from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and is currently working as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Her research interests focus on the diversity of linguistic variation in word meanings. In her studies, she integrates insights from linguistics and psychology.
Carmen Lúcia Reis Rodrigues holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Paris VII—Denis Diderot (France). She is a professor of Linguistics at the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in the Postgraduate Program in Languages and Knowledge in the Amazon (PPLSA—UFPA). She has a background in indigenous languages, with a focus on the Xipaya language. She is currently also studying Brazilian toponymy of indigenous origin.
Cristina Martins Fargetti holds a PhD in Linguistics from University of Campinas—UNICAMP, and she is an Associate Professor at São Paulo State University—UNESP, where she teachs for undergrated and graduated students. She proposed “Ethnographic Terminology” in the Lexical Studies of minoritarian languages, and her main research focuses on Juruna Language, spoke at Mato Grosso, Xingu, Brazil. She is the leader of LINBRA—Grupo de Pesquisa em Línguas Indígenas Brasileiras—Brazilian Indigenous Languages Research Group.
Franklin Espinoza has completed his MA in Linguistics coursework at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and is working on Central Quechua for his thesis. He worked as a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, teaching various Quechua courses for specializations in Linguistics, Literature, and Arts. He is currently a contributing member of the Quechua Language Chair and a collaborator at the Institute for Linguistic Research (INVEL) on various research projects on Quechua at the same university. His experience also includes working for the Peruvian Ministery of Education. His areas of academic interest involve the description of Quechuan languages and Cognitive Linguistics.
Gema Silva earned an M.A. in Linguistics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú with a thesis on the structure and semantics of nominal compounds in Urarina. She has worked as a lecturer at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia and Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Since 2017, she has been working collaboratively with members of the Urarina people on projects involving linguistic documentation and description, as well as the development of educational materials. She has been a consultant on topics related to Peruvian indigenous languages for various public and private institutions.
Iwona Kraska-Szlenk is Professor at the University of Warsaw, where she teaches courses on general linguistics and Swahili language and literature. Her research interests focus on embodiment and language-culture connection, lexical semantics, phonology-morphology interface, and usage-based methodologies. She has authored several books, including: Analogy: The Relation between Lexicon and Grammar (LINCOM 2007) and Semantics of Body Part Terms: General Trends and a Case Study of Swahili (LINCOM 2014), and edited multi-authored volumes, including: The Body in Language: Comparative Studies of Linguistic Embodiment (with Matthias Brenzinger, Brill, 2014), Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies: The ‘Head’ (Brill, 2019), Body Part Terms in Conceptualization and Language Usage (Benjamins, 2020), Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies: The ‘Eye’ (with Melike Baş, Brill, 2021).
Izabela Will Ph.D. (2005, University of Warsaw), is an Associate Professor at the Chair of African Languages and Cultures at that university. Her research focuses on the Hausa language and culture, as well as on conventionalized and partially conventionalized gestures used in northern Nigeria. She is the Chief Editor of the journal Studies in African Languages and Cultures, a co-editor of several books on African studies and West African languages, and the author of numerous publications, including the monograph Recurrent Gestures of Hausa Speakers (2021).
Jaime Peña is an Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, where he also serves as Director of the Linguistics Program. His research includes different works on Jivaroan (Chicham) and Peba-Yaguan languages, as well as on Urarina (isolate) and other Amazonian and Andean languages. His academic interests lean towards language description, the relationship between language-culture and cognition, typology, and synchronic and diachronic morphosyntax.
Joseph Jaoko Ochieng is a final-year Ph.D. student in Linguistics at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. His research focuses on embodied cognition within the frameworks of conceptual metaphor theory and cultural linguistics, specifically examining cultural models behind the figurative extensions of body parts in his native language, Dholuo. He actively contributes to cognitive and cultural linguistics through research, publications, and academic forums. His publications include Conceptualizations of HEAD in Dholuo (Studies in African Languages and Cultures, 2022) and A Linguistic Analysis of Metaphorical Euphemisms Used in Dholuo HIV/AIDS Discourse (Springer, in press).
Judit Baranyiné Kóczy is an Associate Professor at the University of Pannonia, where her research explores the interplay between language, conceptualization, and culture within the frameworks of cognitive semantics, conceptual metaphor theory, and cultural linguistics. Her primary focus lies in embodied and folk cultural metaphors. Her monograph, Nature, Metaphor, Culture: Cultural Conceptualizations in Hungarian Folksongs, was published by Springer in 2018. In 2021, she chaired The Third Cultural Linguistics International Conference (CLIC-2021) in Budapest. She has authored numerous articles in national and international journals, contributed chapters to several books, and co-edited volumes, including Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies: The ‘Heart’ (Brill, 2023). She has also been invited as a keynote speaker at conferences in Chongqing, China (2023) and Bremen, Germany (2025).
Kelsie Pattillo is a former Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research primarily focuses on embodiment. Since her 2014 dissertation titled Cross-Linguistic Metonymies in Human Limb Nomenclature, Dr. Pattillo has published an assortment of book chapters in Brill’s Embodiment in Cross-Linguistic Studies series and served as the coeditor for the series’ volume The ‘Face’ (Pattillo and Waśniewska 2023). Her remaining work on the foot/leg includes ‘Limb term naming patterns in South American languages. Anthropological Linguistics 60:4 (2018).
Małgorzata Waśniewska is a discourse analyst and cognitive linguist, currently working as an assistant professor at SWPS University in Warsaw, Poland. Her research focuses on linguistic symptoms of dehumanization in discourse and the embodiment of body part terms from a cross-linguistic perspective. She has published several chapters on body part terms, including studies on ‘entrails’, ‘eye’, and ‘face’.
Marleny Rodríguez has completed her M.A. in Linguistics coursework at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. She works as a specialist for the Peruvian Ministry of Education, where she has been in charge of several projects for the development of literacy and writing systems, pedagogical materials and bilingual education assessment for several indigenous communities. Her academic interests involve the documentation, analysis and description of Harakbut language and culture, as well as literacy and bilingual education. She is also a published poetry author.
Mateus Cruz Maciel de Carvalho is Professor at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of São Paulo—Salto Campus, where he teaches courses on general linguistics (phonology, morphology, syntax). He holds a PhD (2017, São Paulo State University—Unesp) in Linguistics investigating aspects of morphology and syntax of Deni language, an Arawá language spoken in the Brazilian Amazon. Currently, his research focuses on the language, culture and cognition connection, especially on the embodiment theory.
Rosanna Tramutoli is a Postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (2019–2022). Her research focus is Bantu lexical analysis and a comparison of Swahili and Zulu body terminology. She holds a PhD in Asia, Africa and Mediterranean (2018) from the University of Naples “L’Orientale” and the University of Bayreuth. She has published a monograph entitled Encoding Emotions in Swahili. A Cognitive Linguistic Analysis with a Consideration of the Socio-cultural Context (Köppe, 2020). Among her main research interests are body-part terminology, conceptual metaphor theory, lexical semantics and lexicography.
Yi Tie is an associate professor at Zhengzhou University, where she also serves as a postdoctoral researcher and master’s thesis supervisor. Specializing in cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis, her scholarly contributions include co-authoring the book Perception and Metaphor: A Comparative Perspective Between English and Chinese (with Qin Xiugui, Routledge, 2022), as well as a dozen journal articles and book chapters. Her research delves into the intricate relationship between language, cognition, and cultural expression, offering valuable insights into cross-linguistic and cross-cultural studies.
Yongxian Luo is a professor at the University of Melbourne. A specialist of Tai-Kadai languages, his research is focusing on the reconstruction of the Tai family of languages, as well as documentation and grammatical description of lesser-known languages in this region. His publications include The Subgroup Structure of the Tai Languages (University of California Press 1997), A Dictionary of Dehong, Southwest China (Pacific Linguistics 2000), The Tai-Kadai Languages (with Anthony Diller and Jerold Edmondson, Routledge 2008), A Grammar of Zoulei (with Li Xia and Li Jinfang, Peter Lang 2014), and “Morphology in Kra-Dai Languages” (in Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Linguistics, 2020), along with several dozen book chapters and journal articles.