Limburgish Academy

noun (countable) /ˈlɪmˌbɜː(r)ɡɪʃ əˈkædəmi/

a nonprofit organization established in 2007 to encourage interest in and the preservation and further development of the Limburgish language and all its dialects

Executive Board

Our Executive Board handles current affairs for the Limburgish Academy, coordinates and facilitates our projects and maintains and promotes contacts with the Limburgish language field.

chair

secretary

treasurer

Dr. Yuri Michielsen, MA, LL.M (Harvard)
Limburgish Academy: chair
Team Digital Limburgish: coordinator
Location: Maastricht

/yuri-joeri-michielsen-17a40423/
Email: yuri@limburgs.org

Yuri (Maastricht, 1970) coordinates the digitization project for Limburgish. He approaches and concludes contracts with authors and publishers for permission to use Limburgish texts. As a lawyer he writes analysis of Limburgish language policy and the position of Limburgish within the Dutch legal order and has written an NGO report for the Council of Europe. Yuri also writes Limburgish poems and has translated literature into Limburgish, such as fables by Aesop, ‘The Adventure of Alice in Woonderland’ by Lewis Carol, poems by Konstantin Kavafis and stories by Franz Kafka.

Publications

Dr. Coen van Laer
Limburgish Academy: secretary
Team Digital Limburgish: legal affairs
Locatie: Meerssen

/conrad-van-laer-phd-3425104
Email: sikkertaris@limburgs.org

Coen is a lawyer and philosopher. He has lived in four different cities in Limburg and is retired. Coen wrote a dissertation on the usefulness of comparative concepts for legal studies. He has published regularly in the field of copyright and library matters. Coen is also interested in cultural differences, multilingualism and legal terminology, and in particular in bilingual legal dictionaries. He contributes to the compilation of a Limburg legal dictionary as a by-product of the Limburgish Corpus Dictionary.

Publications

Roel Tillij
Limburgish Academy: treasurer
Team Digital Limburgish: contractual affairs
Location: Maastricht

/roeland-tillij-7315949/
Email: penningmeister@limburgs.org

Roel has worked at Maastricht University Library from 1974 until his retirement December 2010. He held the positions of Acquisitions Librarian, Contract manager and Senior Policy advisor. He has also worked as Senior Policy Advisor for the UKB, the Dutch Consortium for University Libraries and the Royal Library, tending to Consortia and Acquisitions matters, including contract management of licensing Electronic media. Roel was also responsible for appraising the library collection, appraising old books, auctions for acquisitions and sales of redundant books.

Board Members

Our regular Board members help to decide on the major policies of the Limburgish Academy, execute parts of our projects and maintain and promote international contacts.

board member

Ligeia Lugli, PhD
Limburgish Academy: board member
Team Digital Limburgish: lexicography
Location: London

email: ligeia@limburgs.org
website: https://kcl.academia.edu/ligeialugli

Ligeia holds a PhD in Study of Religions from SOAS and is currently research fellow at King’s College London (UK), Researcher in the Lexicography in Motion team at SOAS (UK) and head of lexicography and software development at the Mangalam Research Center in Berkeley (USA). Her research lies at the intersection between Buddhist studies, Sanskrit lexicology, lexicography and digital humanities. She also contributes to the development of a number of electronic dictionaries in a variety of languages. Ligeia is the Limburgish Academy representative at eLexis.

Dr. Jean Robert Opgenort
Limburgish Academy: board member
Team Digital Limburgish: NLP processing
Location: Paris

/jeanrobertopgenort/
email: jeanrobert@limburgs.org

Jean Robert (Sittard, 1970) studied French language and literature at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He obtained his doctorate in 2002 on the linguistic description of Wambule, an endangered minority language in Nepal. He then worked as a university researcher at Leiden University and the Universität Bern, Switzerland. Jean Robert has published extensively about his research and was also one of the authors of the UNESCO ‘Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger’. His research areas include the phonetics and phonology of Sittards and Limburgish spelling. Since 2014 he works as a software developer and project manager in Paris.

Michael Anthony Schuler, MA (Harvard)
Limburgish Academy: board member
Team Digital Limburgish: normalisation
Location: San Francisco

/michael-anthony-schuler-1026416/
Email: michael@limburgs.org

Michael is a linguist with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Linguistics and East Asian Studies from Harvard University. He also won a fellowship from the Harvard-Yenching Institute to pursue his study of Chinese at Nanjing University. Michael worked as an opera coach and conductor, specializing in multilingual diction coaching and language teaching. His opera career included positions at the Zurich Opera International Opera Studio and the Hannover State Opera as well as the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He currently works at Google as an interaction designer for conversational user interfaces.