Skutnabb‐Kangas, Tove

Abstract

Abstract Tove Skutnabb‐Kangas grew up bilingual in Finnish and Swedish. She had university qualifications in Swedish and education from Helsinki Universisty. As a research assistant to Einar Haugen at Harvard she was introduced to bilingualism studies, the ecology of languages, and language policy. With a social pychologist she undertook empirical studies of Finnish children's learning in Swedish schools that were published in two UNESCO reports in the 1970s. This led to a lifelong concern with the importance of mother tongue‐based bilingual education. Bilingualism or not – the education of minorities was initially published in Swedish. She published around 50 monographs and over 400 articles and book chapters, which have been published in 48 languages, on minority education, multilingualism, linguistic human rights, linguistic genocide, the subtractive spread of English, and the relationship between biodiversity and linguistic diversity. She worked closely with First Nations scholars worldwide, and was active in many international organisations. With her husband, Robert Phillipson, she edited anthologies on language rights and linguistic human rights, and the Handbook of Linguistic Human Rights (2023), with 62 contributors, from relevant disciplines and contexts. Tove lectured worldwide and with Robert taught graduate courses in India and China. She died in 2023.

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