Ilya Yakubovich (PhD 2008) continues to live in Chicago and contribute to scholarship as much as his schedule allows him. In April 2009, his paper “Hittite-Luvian Bilingualism and the Origin of Anatolian Hieroglyphs” was awarded Oliver Gurney Memorial Prize for the best paper in Anatolian Studies written by a junior scholar. In October 2009, he defended his second dissertation “Studies in Sogdian Etymology” (in Russian) at the Russian State University for the Humanities. November 2009 saw the publication of his book “Sociolinguistics of the Luvian Language”, which is based upon his University of Chicago Ph.D. thesis.
Nicholas Kontovas (B.A. 2008) is attending an MA program in Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University as of this fall. Nicholas’s past work has included “Lexical Renegotiation: Language adaptation, loanword attitudes and the composition of the Modern Uyghur lexicon,” part of an ongoing investigation into Uyghur speakers in China. Best of luck!