Antonia Soriente was born and raised in Italy where she obtained her BA in Foreign languages with specialization in Indonesian. She moved to Jakarta where she obtained her Master degree in Linguistics at Universitas Indonesia. In 2003 she completed her PhD program in Linguistics at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia on the classification of Kenyah languages. The initial objective of drawing a linguistic map of a district along the Bahau River, tributary of the Kayan River, in Kalimantan, Indonesia developed into the classification of all the Kenyah variants spread in the area between East Kalimantan and Sarawak. Her main research topics are documentation and description of Kenyah and other Borneo languages, historical linguistics and language contact.

At the moment she is involved in a project on the documentation of two Kenyah languages, Uma' Kulit and Oma Lung.

Her other interests are applied linguistics as related to teaching Indonesian language and child language acquisition and bilingualism.

Language expertise:
Italian, Indonesian, Malay, Kenyah, Penan.

Email: <asoriente at unior.it>