Geoffrey Hull

Australian linguist, ethnologist, and historian who has contributed to the study of Romance, Celtic, Slavic, Semitic, Austronesian, and Papuan languages. He studied Literature at the University of Sydney, completing a doctorate in historical linguistics after dialectological research in Italy and Switzerland. In his academic career, he has taught at several Australian universities; he is also a professional lexicographer and translator working in more than a dozen languages. He is currently an adjunct professor at Macquarie University in Sydney. In the 1990s, he assisted the East Timorese leadership in exile in the task of standardizing Tetum and creating a range of linguistic and literary resources for this and other languages ​​of East Timor, then under Indonesian occupation. From 2001 to 2007, he was director of research and publications at the National Institute of Linguistics, the national linguistic authority of the independent state of East Timor. He was also the organizer, principal author, and editor of the national dictionary of Tetum. His services to Portuguese and the other languages ​​of East Timor are of the utmost importance and were recognized by the Portuguese Government in 2012 with the award of Commander of the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator.