Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · 14d

The Donald Knuth and Charles Bigelow Type Design Incubator invites students—especially from Digitally Disadvantaged Language communities—to explore typography in a supportive online program. Successful Applicants receive 100% Scholarship coverage! Learn more: kbitype.org @stanfordsilicon.bsky.social

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Sep 19

It's happening! Join @e-l-p.bsky.social for the #ELPLaunch right now! bit.ly/ELP-launch #langsky #language #events

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Reposted by Bridget Chase

Endangered Languages Project @e-l-p.bsky.social · Sep 10

Join us for a week of celebration at ELP! 🎉

From Sept. 11-18, we're hosting a share-a-thon. Each day, we'll post a challenge for ways you can get involved and contribute - and you could win an ELP t-shirt!

On Sept. 19, join us for an online launch celebration! Register at bit.ly/ELP-launch

Colorful flyer with text: "Participate in the share-a-thon! We invite everyone to get involved with the new ELP platform. For the next 7 days leading up to our launch event, we’re posting daily challenges for you to engage with the new website. Win an ELP t-shirt - one raffle winner daily!"

At the top is a screenshot of the revitalization map from the new ELP website. At the bottom is an image of a green ELP t-shirt with an abstract design of two people, filled with leaves and flowers, speaking in front of trees and mountains.

Colorful flyer with text: "Join us to celebrate - free online launch event! Join the Endangered Languages Project (ELP) as we celebrate the launch of our new website: a global space to connect, learn, collaborate, and share around language revitalization. Register here: http://bit.ly/ELP-launch"

At the top is a screenshot of the homepage map from the new ELP website. At the bottom is an illustration of a wolf, a laptop, and a leaf.

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Aug 18

Beyond excited to announce that I will be teaching two courses this fall, one with the University of British Columbia & one with the University of Victoria

More info on these programs can be found here:
📍UBC FNEL: cis.arts.ubc.ca
📍UVic ILD: tinyurl.com/LING183B

@arts.ubc.ca @uvic.ca #langsky

FNEL_V 180: Introduction to Endangered Language Documentation and Revitalization, First Nations and Endangered Languages Program
September 2 - December 20, 2025
Foundational concepts in the critical study of cultural, historical, social, and political factors that impact language loss, retention, and revival. Introducing strategies and practical methodologies for collaborative, interdisciplinary, community-based documentation and revitalization projects for First Nations and Indigenous languages.

LING 183B: Indigenous Language
Documentation Capstone
Designing and conducting a project to support community language revitalization efforts by creating either new language documentation, or a new language resource based on existing documentation. Implements throughout: strategies for community involvement; project planning; protocols; consideration of ethical and intellectual property issues.
Indigenous Language Documentation Micro-Certificate Program November 19, 2025 – February 25, 2026

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Aug 13

“When developing technology, cultural intelligence is just as important as developing artificial intelligence” — Peter-Lucas Jones

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Te Hiku is a champion of ethical language technology grounded in data sovereignty best practices.

www.wired.com/story/maori-... #WAVES2025 #langsky

Māori are trying to save their language from Big Tech

Te Hiku Media gathered huge swathes of Māori language data. Corporates are now trying to get the rights to it

www.wired.com

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Aug 13

First off this morning, blessed to hear Peter-Lucas Jones (Te Aupōuri, Ngāi Takoto, Ngāti Kahu) speak about the amazing work of Te Hiku Media.

“We don’t just want to be the users of technology, we want to be the creators of it too.“

#WAVES2025 #langsky

Photo of Peter-Lucas Jones on stage speaking at WAVES 2025

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Aug 13

I’ll be attending as many talks and presentations as I can at #WAVES2025 over the next couple of days, and I’ll use this thread 🧵 to share some of the insights from the great speakers and knowledge keepers here. Today, the theme is #Langauge & #Technology! 💻💬

#langsky

Graphic promoting WAVES 2025, Global Indigenous Languages Summit in Ottawa Canada

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Aug 13

Thrilled to be at WAVES 2025, the Global Indigenous Languages Summit by @ocil-ila.bsky.social to share the work of the Indigenous North American Type project @typotheque.com

Come visit our booth — the exhibit hall floor 3 & come to our collab session at 2 PM today in room 206! #WAVES2025 #langsky

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Aug 1

#ATypI invites proposals for its two 2026 conferences:

Homescreen references the unfinished journey of creating a truly global digital age ... as homescreens feel like “home” for a remarkably small number of language communities

tinyurl.com/AtypI-call

ATypI 2026 Call for Proposals - ATypI

ATypI invites proposals for talks, workshops, panels, and experimental presentations for its two 2026 conferences. Stanford, California — HomescreenSharjah, UAE — Between For 2026, ATypI not only retu...

atypi.org

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Jul 21

"Ensuring #linguistic equality within #technology is one piece of a much larger puzzle to advance the bigger goals of #language vitality ... and #Unicode plays a massive role in that work"

multilingual-news.castos.com/episodes/uni...

Honoured to speak on "Localization Today" by MultiLingual Media:

The Unicode Consortium: Inside the Global Mission

We sit down with three Unicode Consortium contributors—Stephen Loomis (Chair, Digitally Disadvantaged Languages Working Group), Elango Cheran (Vice-Chair, Community Engagement, Google internatio...

multilingual-news.castos.com

Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Jul 2

"Researchers analyzed 262 academic and community-based studies ... and determined 78% of them connected #Indigenous #language vitality with improved health.

... Language revitalization plays into identity and feelings of belonging and connection."

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/... #langsky

Indigenous people's health tightly tied to speaking their own languages, review finds | CBC News

Researchers analyzed 262 academic and community-based studies from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and determined 78 per cent of them connected Indigenous language vitality with ...

www.cbc.ca

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Jun 12

Delighted to guest lecture this afternoon in @uvic.ca's IED 199: Special Studies in Indigenous Education: Technology for SENĆOŦEN Learning. I shared my experiences and advice around working in #language #technology, and it was so fun to speak in a course taught by my dear friend+colleague Ben Chung.

Slide that says "Working in language revitalization technology - careers within the field and practical advice for job hunting" by Bridget Chase, IED 99: Special Studies in Indigenous Education: Technology for SENĆOŦEN Learning

Slide that says: Pursuing an Indigenous language technology role in the private sector? Here are some starting questions: What sorts of ethical considerations are you taking into account when doing this work? (If the answer is vague or generic, 🚩🚩🚩). How is the community involved? How much of the work is community-directed, and how is that direction being shared with the team? What are the data sovereignty practices in place? Is there AI/LLM/ML work happening here? What is the scope of this work, and how will Indigenous language rights be protected? If you’re building a piece of technology (an app, website, etc.) what are the long term maintenance plans? Who owns the product, who updates it? Who owns the code?

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · May 24

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 absolutely fantastic, I hope to be able to read more or watch this

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Reposted by Bridget Chase

Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · May 23

i have been hesitant to participate in the “AI for Good” Summit, that takes place in Geneva annually. but this year, i have been given a keynote (not a panel or similar participation) so, i said yes. here’s the first draft of my talk

The growing enthusiasm for applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to humanitarian and development goals has sparked a surge in "AI for Social Good" (AI4SG) initiatives from humanitarian and philanthropic institutions and tech monopolies alike. While these initiatives aspire to address global challenges such as poverty, gender inequality, and climate change, they often conceal deeper issues: AI systems that 1) simply fail to live up to their claims 2) encode Eurocentrism, systemic inequities, and injustices, and 3) built under capitalist, extractive, and borderline illegal practices.

In this talk, I argue that that many AI4SG efforts are less about meaningful social transformation and more about techsolutionism—where complex political, historical, and social issues are reduced to technical problems assumed to be solvable through “innovation”. By critically examining who defines “good,” who benefits, and what structural issues remain unaddressed, this talk challenges the dominant narratives around AI4SG and calls for a more accountable, human-centric, and context-aware approach to “social good”.

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · May 23

Thrilled to be presenting this morning with my fantastic colleague Leo Vicenti at Multilingüe 2025, an event about the revitalization of the Indigenous languages of the Americas through #typography, #research, and #technology.

#multilingue2025 #langsky

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Reposted by Bridget Chase

Gerald Roche @geraldroche.bsky.social · May 16

The Endangered Languages Project (@e-l-p.bsky.social), in partnership with the First People's Cultural Council, recently released a guide for journalists who are writing about Indigenous and minority languages. It's great. Let me show you.
fpcc.ca/resource/say...

Say it with Respect: A Journalists' Guide - First Peoples Cultural Council

Say it with Respect: A Journalists' Guide to Reporting on Indigenous & Minoritized Languages by ELP and FPCC.

fpcc.ca

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Reposted by Bridget Chase

Constanze Ackermann-Boström @conab.bsky.social · May 2

Do you know someone who writes about #Indigenous, #minoritized and/or #endangered languages and #languagerevitalization? This new publication might be useful! ⤵️

Endangered Languages Project @e-l-p.bsky.social · May 2

In advance of World Press Freedom Day tomorrow, ELP and @fpcc.ca are excited to launch a new #journalism resource:

“Say it With Respect: A Journalists’ Guide to Reporting on Indigenous & Minoritized Languages, Language Endangerment, and Language Revitalization" 🗞️

⅙ #langsky 🐦🐦

Say it with Respect: A Journalists' Guide - First Peoples Cultural Council

Say it with Respect: A Journalists' Guide to Reporting on Indigenous & Minoritized Languages by ELP and FPCC.

fpcc.ca

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · May 2

Anna, Amanda and I collaborated with language community members, #linguists & scholars on this resource. If you're a #journalist #reporter, #editor or #writer who may engage with topics of Indigenous / minoritized languages, #language endangerment or language revitalization, please use + share this!

We warmly invite journalists and editors to use this resource, and share it with their colleagues. We hope it can help you tell these important stories, and "say it with respect". Find the guide at (a QR code)! (Note for alt text readers, the link is also embedded into the first post in this thread)

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · May 2

In particular, working in #language #technology, I cringe seeing article after article claiming that some new fancy app or AI is "saving a dying language". These sorts of stories perpetrate false narratives. We wanted to develop a resource to help tell these stories with respect. #langsky #langtech

This guide has three main sections centered around using respectful language when telling stories about language-related topics: red flags, disrespectful; yellow flags, use with caution; green flags, respectful. Each flag has an explanation and - where appropriate - a suggested alternative.

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · May 2

Thrilled to launch a #journalism resource written by myself, @nabelew.bsky.social & Amanda Holmes:
tinyurl.com/languagejour...

We appreciate the growing attention the #media is giving to #language endangerment & revitalization, but issues are often covered in ways cause unintentional harm. How? 🗞️

Reporting on language endangerment often falls into deficit narratives, like: "This ancient, dying language with only 5 speakers needs saving." This kind of framing spreads false assumptions while obscuring the roots of the problem. How does this resource help?

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Reposted by Bridget Chase

Ruth Rouvier @wrooth.bsky.social · Apr 22

This *NEW* Sharing Language Diversity Fellowship supports PhD students who are engaged in the documentation of Indigenous languages and the archiving of linguistic data as part of their PhD graduate studies.

Sharing Language Diversity Fellowship

www.endangeredlanguagefund.org

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Reposted by Bridget Chase

Typotheque @typotheque.com · Apr 14

We have a new font release. Hard-to-categorise, designed to bring an informal, warm personality to both Thai and Latin scripts. www.typotheque.com/blog/pristine

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Mar 28

I don’t usually share non-language-related news stories on here, but I can’t help myself with this one. There was LITERALLY an entire episode of Parks and Rec about this!

Screen captures with captions of a Parks and Rec episode. The local political (and dentist who wants to make more money off of Pawnee citizens) says: “Councilwoman Knope wants to put fluoride, which is a chemical, into your drinking water. You know what else is a chemical? Strychnine and cyanide.” The news anchor says: “And dirt, and rust, and even broken glass.” And the politician replies: “Exactly. You definitely understand what chemicals are, Perd.”

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Reposted by Bridget Chase

Endangered Languages Project @e-l-p.bsky.social · Mar 18

On March 28, come learn from and support ELP's 2024-25 interns as they share about their languages, communities, and their work at ELP!

Elwin Huaman (Quechua), Maison Ole Nkurrunah (Maasai) and Riathung Kyong (Kyong/Naga) will be sharing about all they've done this year: bit.ly/ELPinterns2025

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Bridget Chase @bchasemadethis.bsky.social · Mar 11

I enjoyed presenting to technology stakeholders today at #ICANN82: "Business Experiences in Updating Systems for the Evolving TLD Landscape"

Ensuring accurate & predictable access to digital spaces for all languages, across all devices, is a cornerstone of language justice. #langsky @typotheque.com

Screenshot of a slide that says "What are the core types of issues communities face?" with three boxes underneath that say: 1. Access to full Unicode representation of one's orthography, 2. Access to functional and thoughtfully designed keyboards, and 3. Access to typefaces that accurately and respectfully render orthographies

A photo of Bridget Chase and others sitting on a panel at ICANN 82

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