Person

Karolin Obert is the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded project Walk and Talk, Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, and Associate Director of the Indigenous Languages Initiative at LLILAS. Her research explores how language reflects and shapes human experience within biophysical environments and sociocultural contexts. She conducts long-term documentation of endangered languages in the Upper Rio Negro region of Brazilian Amazonia, focusing on Dâw and Nadëb (Naduhup). Her work examines typological patterns and their historical and cultural underpinnings, with emphasis on the linguistic encoding of space, place, and landscape, and the development of family-internal typological diversity. Combining theoretical inquiry with extensive fieldwork, Karolin employs audiovisual, semantic, and geospatial documentation methods to advance comparative typologies of spatial language and supports Indigenous language preservation.