Announcing the 2025-26 Oaxacan Languages THI Public Fellows
The Humanities Institute (THI) is thrilled to announce the 2025-26 Oaxacan Languages THI Public Fellows. Three THI Graduate Public Fellows will spend the upcoming academic year working on community-engaged research on Indigenous Oaxacan languages spoken in California’s Central Coast in collaboration with Senderos, a nonprofit creating successful pathways for the Latino community of Santa Cruz County and building cross-cultural connections locally and abroad. The fellows will be supported by UCSC faculty mentors, Special Collections and the Community Archivist at the UCSC Library, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH), and a team at THI.
Their research will help develop and design an exhibition on Oaxacan Languages of the Central Coast and Latine/o/x language and identity scheduled for Spring 2027 at the MAH. Partnering with Senderos, and building on the Nido de Lenguas project, they will begin to develop materials for the exhibition, which will focus on four interlocking themes: a) language science, b) Indigenous Oaxacan languages, c) language and identity, and d) language and history in the Monterey Bay.
Congratulations to our inaugural cohort of Oaxacan Languages THI Public Fellows! Learn more about the Oaxacan Languages of the Transnational Central Coast project and see all THI Fellows on our website.
Matthew Kogan is a Ph.D. student in Linguistics whose research investigates the representations and mechanisms that facilitate language processing. During his graduate studies, Matthew has been volunteering with Nido de Lenguas, and co-designed A Game of Tones, a web-based game for learning about the lexical tones of Santiago Laxopa Zapotec, a language spoken in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca. Matthew also brings with him experience in humanities and arts-focused public programming, having previously worked as a Programs Assistant at Indexical through the THI Summer Public Fellowship.
Eli Sharf is a Ph.D. student in Linguistics, with a research focus on the intersection of semantics and pragmatics. Eli has worked with the Indigenous languages of Mesoamerica since his undergraduate years, having written his B.A. thesis on Q’anjob’al. As a graduate student, Eli has visited Oaxaca to participate in a collaborative study of Zapotec and has engaged with the Oaxacan community in the greater Santa Cruz area, while also volunteering with Nido de Lenguas. He has helped to build and run language learning games for a number of events, supporting community-based linguistic work in Santa Cruz.
Carla Soto is a Ph.D. student in Education at UC Santa Cruz researching how dominant raciolinguistic ideologies contribute to the erasure of Indigenous Latine identities within school settings. Carla’s research is grounded in her extensive experience with community engagement, having mentored Latine students in Santa Cruz schools through the Corre la Voz program and high school students with School Kids Investigate Language in Life and Society (SKILLS) program in Santa Barbara. She has a deep interest in the study of languages and received her B.A. in Linguistics with an emphasis on Chinese, Spanish, and Italian, before starting her doctoral program in Santa Cruz.
The Oaxacan Languages of the Transnational Central Coast project is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Center for Comparative Language Sciences (CLaS), the UCSC Board Opportunity Fund (BOF), the UC-Hispanic Serving Institutions Doctoral Diversity Initiative, the UCSC Graduate Division, and The Humanities Institute.
Banner Photo: At the 2025 Guelaguetza organized by Senderos in Santa Cruz. Photo credit: Crystal Birns