Yuri Michielsen-Tallman is Chair of the Limburgish Academy Foundation. He is a native of Limburg and is currently based in San Francisco. In 1998, Dr Michielsen-Tallman graduated from the European Law School at Maastricht University. During his law studies, he participated in the 1996/1997 European Law Moot Court, and won awards as a member of the Winning Team and Best Speaker. Following an internship with the Legal Service of the European Commission, he graduated as a Fulbright scholar from the LLM programme at the Harvard Law School in 2000. In 2004, he received his PhD cum laude from Maastricht University. Dr Michielsen-Tallman’s PhD thesis, The Nazification and Denazification of the Courts in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, was published by Maastricht University Press. His PhD was nominated for the Max van der Stoel human rights award in 2005. In the same year, he was awarded the Praemium Erasmianum for his research and also received the SNS award in 2006. In 2008, Dr Michielsen-Tallman was awarded the diploma of the Liergank Limburgs, a higher education course in Limburgish, which is provided by Veldeke Limburg and the province of East Limburg.

Stuart LaRosa is Vice Chair of the Limburgish Academy Foundation. He is a San Francisco-based linguist trained in formal and applied linguistics. Mr LaRosa has maintained a special interest in minority language politics beginning with his 1999 thesis, Raíces del catalanismo (The Roots of Catalanism), which received highest honors from the Geneva-based International Baccalaureate Organisation. He received his BA magna cum laude with majors in Linguistics, Spanish, and French from the University of Florida in 2003. He went on to receive his MA in linguistics from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2005. At UCSC, Mr LaRosa was trained in formal aspects of syntax, semantics, and phonology, culminating in his thesis, Cluster Simplification and Sonorant Alternations in Catalan. Mr LaRosa is currently a Senior Discourse Analyst at H5 in San Francisco.