Steven Bird
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Research
Over the past thirty years, Steven Bird has been working with minoritised people groups in Africa, Melanesia, Amazonia, Europe and Australia, and exploring how people keep their oral languages and cultures strong. He has held academic appointments at Edinburgh, UPenn, Berkeley, and Melbourne. Since 2017 he has been research professor in the Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University, where he collaborates with First Nations leaders and directs the Top End Language Lab.
Service
Steven established the ACL Anthology, the Open Language Archives Community (with Gary Simons), and the Natural Language Toolkit (with Edward Loper and Ewan Klein). He was associate director of the Linguistic Data Consortium (1998-2002), and president of the Association for Computational Linguistics (2009). Steven pursues other language-related projects at aikuma.org.Qualifications
• A.Mus.A. (Melb, 1983) Classical Guitar
• B.Sc. (hons) (Melb, 1985) CS / Mathematics
• M.Sc. (Melb, 1987) Computer Science
• Ph.D. (Edin, 1990) Computational Linguistics -
Highlights
Creative Initiatives
• Language Parties
• Untranslatable Words
• Aikuma ProjectBooks
• Natural Language Processing with Python (with Loper and Klein; O’Reilly, 2009)
• Petit Dictionnaire Yémba-Français (with Tadadjeu; NACALCO/SIL Cameroon, 1997)
• Computational Phonology (Cambridge, 1995)Keynotes
• ALS keynote (Perth, 2026)
• Interspeech keynote (Sydney, 2026)
• ALTA keynote (Canberra, 2024)
• CLARIN keynote (Barcelona, 2024)
• LREC ~ Zampolli Prize (Marseille, 2022)
• ACL keynote panel (Dublin, 2022)
• EMNLP keynote (Dominican Republic, 2021)Recent Grants
• First Nations AI: Country, Climate, Communication
(with Gumbula; ARC 2024-27)
• Language parties in the Kimberley
(ILA 2025-26)
• Investing in Aboriginal Languages
(with Christie, Spencer; ARC 2021-25)
• Learning English and Aboriginal Languages for Work
(with Yibarbuk; ARC 2019-23) -
Publications
Recent
• Supporting and performing culture from the inside, Frermann and Bird (2026). Proc EMNLP.
• Big AI is accelerating the metacrisis: What can we do?, Bird (2026). Proc ACL.
• Towards a general theory of linguistic diversity, Bird (2026). Proc SIGUL.
• Teaching food knowledge through a card game, Hlavackova and Bird (2025). Language Documentation and Conservation.
• Must NLP be extractive?, Bird (2024), Proc ACL. 🏆
• Centering the speech community, Bird and Yibarbuk (2024), Proc ACL. 🏆Manuscripts
• “We are that beacon”: Illuminating Indigenous sovereignty through truth-telling, Curtin, Pigram, Wallace and Bird (in press). Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology.
• Designing for the revitalisation of language and cultural practices, Hlavackova and Bird (under review).
• Understanding how Indigenous language revitalisation programs work from a local community’s perspective, Wiltshire, Hardwick and Bird (under review).
Learning English and Aboriginal Languages for Work
This project leverages mobile technologies to expand and enrich the communication between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians working together on Aboriginal owned or controlled country. We are generating new knowledge in the areas of oral language learning and on-country technology design, through extensive collaboration with Indigenous participants in Arnhem Land. Project outcomes include mobile technologies that support learning of spoken English and Aboriginal languages, new ways for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians to come together to design digital technologies and to learn each other's languages. (ARC DP19)
First Nations Climate Communication
This project is co-designing cross-cultural communications about weather using AI by partnering with Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, the Bureau of Meteorology and industry engineers. The project will build Aboriginal capacity in AI, and indigenous knowledge will improve the scientific accuracy of predictions and the outcomes of adaptation strategies. Culturally sensitive AI promises to have many benefits for Australia: improving crisis communications, limiting fatalities and injuries, and reducing the costs of emergency response, healthcare, trauma and damage to property and economic activity. (ARC DP24)
Investing in Aboriginal Languages
We are developing a systematic account of Aboriginal language programs and what makes them effective and sustainable. The project is creating an evidence base, leading to models of language revitalisation and how they work in each place, and for whom. The models show ways for local and national organisations to invest in Aboriginal languages, and what kinds of returns they can expect. The project involves a two-way collaboration with Aboriginal people across the country that will elevate local voices and build local capacity for designing and evaluating programs, businesses and technologies for keeping Aboriginal languages strong. (ARC DP21)