Dr. Elena Bashir
Elena Bashir wrote her PhD dissertation on the Kalasha language in the Linguistics Department at the University of Michigan (USA). During the course of that work she discovered both the many similarities and the differences between Khowar and Kalasha.  Since then (1988) her major research focus has been on Khowar, about which she is working on a reference grammar planned to include a grammar proper, selection of texts, and a glossary. She has spent most of her adult life in Pakistan and has also done linguistic research on other languages of Pakistan, especially in the northern parts of the country. Her main interests are in descriptive and comparative work on the smaller or understudied languages of the country, with the aim of helping to document its rich and varied cultural heritage.  For the past several years she has been teaching Urdu at the University of Chicago (USA).