In our Scholar Development program, emerging scholars (known as Pike Scholars) are mentored by established scholars (the Fellows of the Pike Center) as they practice the craft of scholarship. We now invite you to get to know each of them a little better.
Alumni of the Pike Scholars Program
The following people are alumni of the Pike Scholars Program. Alumni who have become Fellows are also noted.
Alumnus
Karl Anderbeck
Karl Anderbeck is in the final stages of a PhD program in dialectology and sociolinguistics at the National University of Malaysia. The title of his dissertation is Mapping the dialect network of Western Bornean Malayic. He is an Senior Language Assessment Consultant for SIL International and is currently heading up a pilot project for collaboratively identifying language development needs. His research interests include the problems of language identification in complex dialect networks, and how that relates to identity and language planning efforts in minority speech varieties. See publications.
alumna
June Dickie
June Dickie earned a PhD in Biblical Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) in 2017. Her thesis, Zulu Song, Oral Art: Performing the Psalms to Stir the Heart, was an empirical study of community translation, orality, performance, and ethnomusicology. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and a translation consultant for Wycliffe South Africa. Her research interests center on the reception of biblical text (particularly Old Testament) by local, marginalized communities, including a focus on oral translation, contextual performance translation, and the use of lament psalms in trauma healing. See publications.
alumnus
Tim Hatcher
Tim Hatcher earned a PhD in Intercultural Studies from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary (Missouri) in 2018. His dissertation involved in-depth case studies of three Bible translation programs in different parts of the world to assess how well current theories of Scripture engagement account for the observed results. Tim is an Assistant Professor at Dallas International University and a Scripture Engagement Specialist for SIL International. His ongoing research interests involve developing insights that will empower national Bible translation organizations to incorporate strategic Scripture engagement thinking into their planning and activities. See publications.
alumnus
Tim Kempton
Tim Kempton earned a PhD in computational linguistics from the University of Sheffield (UK) in 2012. The title of his dissertation was Machine-assisted Phonemic Analysis. He now works with SIL Nigeria, training to be a linguistics consultant and is currently working with the Nikyob language community. Tim’s current research interests include using speech recognition technology to help communities develop their writing systems, such as through automatic analysis of data recorded using a participatory approach. See publications.
alumnus
Sangsok Son
Sangsok Son earned a PhD in Educational Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India) in 2018. The title of his dissertation was Negotiating Classroom Linguistic Diversity: A Study of Teaching-Learning Strategies in Multilingual Classrooms in Delhi. He is a literacy and education consultant for SIL’s South Asia Group and LEAD Asia, and is currently the primary investigator for translanguaging pilot research project of LEAD Asia in collaboration with the Foundation for Applied Linguistics in Thailand. Sangsok is interested in developing teaching methods for emergent bilingual children from different linguistic communities studying in the same classroom, using a translanguaging approach. See publications.
alumnus
Brendon Yoder
Brendon Yoder is in the final stages of a PhD program in linguistics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His dissertation investigates the grammar of Abawiri, a previously undescribed Lakes Plain language of Papua, Indonesia. He works with the GIDI church denomination to facilitate Bible translation and language development in Abawiri, and is training as a linguistics consultant with SIL International. His ongoing research involves adapting participatory methods for orthography development to the Papuan context, as well as facilitating analysis of grammar and discourse to support language development and Bible translation programs. See publications.
Alumni who have become Fellows
The following are also alumni who have met the requirements to be recognized as Fellows. See their bios on the Fellows pages.
Dave Eberhard
Angela Kluge
Stephen Watters
Cathryn Yang