Hi! My name is Maaz Ahmad Shaikh [maːz ɛhməd ʃeːχ] (UR: معاذ احمد شیخ; HI: माज़ अहमद शेख़). I am also known by my Ladakhi name, Jigmet [dʒɪgmɛt̪] འཇིགས་མེད.

I am a PhD Candidate and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada). My dissertation, Towards a grammatical description of Zangskari, is expected to be defended in April 2026. My supervisor is Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada, and my committee members are Benjamin Tucker and Shobhana Chelliah. Prior to joining the University of Alberta, I was a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Linguistics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India).

My research lies at the intersection of language documentation and description, grammar writing, morphosyntax, phonology, and language revitalization. I work primarily on Western Tibetic languages of Ladakh, with a particular focus on Zangskari, which I have been documenting since 2020 through sustained fieldwork, archiving, and community collaboration. I also work on Indo-Aryan languages, especially Azamgarhi, an underdescribed Awadhic variety and my heritage language. More broadly, I am interested in comparative approaches to grammar writing and the linguistic ecology of the Awadh and Purvanchal regions of Uttar Pradesh, India.

Outside of linguistics, I enjoy gardening, cooking, coffee, cycling, hiking, swimming, traveling, reading, and spending time in nature.

Selected updates

• July 2025 – Began freelance Hindi localization work for Google’s Gemini AI model through SIDE Global.
• December 2024 – Paper Evolution of grammar writing in Tibetic: A study of best practices from 1831 to the present (with Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada) accepted for publication in Linguistics: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences.
• December 2024 – Awarded the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research (FFAR) Oral Literature Grant for Documentation of the Zangskari version of the Epic of Gesar ($9,990 USD).
• 2024–2025 – Digital Scholarship Fellowship, Digital Scholarship Centre, University of Alberta ($1,200 CAD).
• 2024–2026 – Linguistics Colloquium Liaison, Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta.
• 2023 – Mitacs Globalink Research Award: Empowering communities to preserve their heritage: A citizen science approach to language documentation ($6,000 CAD).

Current projects

Zangskari Gesar Epic documentation
Documentation and annotation of the Zangskari version of the Epic of Gesar, supported by the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research. The project focuses on building an annotated audiovisual corpus with multilingual subtitles and experimental AI-assisted visualizations to support both community access and linguistic research.

Dissertation research
Paper-based doctoral dissertation on Zangskari grammar, based on fieldwork conducted between 2020 and 2025 in Zangskar, Ladakh. The dissertation provides a detailed account of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language, grounded in a documentary corpus.

Zangskari language context
Manuscript prepared for submission to Language Documentation and Description, situating Zangskari within its historical, social, and cultural context, and integrating archival, ethnographic, and community-based sources.

Project snapshots

Documentation of Zangskari

My primary research project documenting Zangskari, a threatened Western Tibetic language spoken in the Zangskar valley of Ladakh, India.

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Field methods on Ladakhi (2019)

Early field-based work on Ladakhi conducted during my MA in Linguistics at the University of Delhi, culminating in a thesis on interrogation in Ladakhi.

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Documentation of Azamgarhi

Documentation of Azamgarhi, an underdescribed Awadhic (Indo-Aryan) language and my heritage language, with a focus on verbal morphology and corpus development.

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Documentation of Bhojpuri

Comparative documentation of Western Bhojpuri in relation to Azamgarhi, examining sociolinguistic influence and structural variation.

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