Appasamy MurugaiyanAppasamy MURUGAIYAN received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Paris 7 (1980). He has specialised in foreign language teaching methodologies, Modern Tamil and Comparative Dravidian linguistics, Tamil epigraphy and the Tamil diasporic stdies. He taught in several Universities: École Pratique des Hautes Études, University of Paris 8, School of Oriental Languages and CREOPS-Sorbonne University. He has published and edited several books and published widely in international journals and chapters in books on modern and historical Tamil linguistics, Tamil epigraphy and Tamil diaspora. His current areas of research include Tamil epigraphy, Tamil historical linguistics and identity construction among the Tamil diaspora of Francophone islands. He has completed two digital archival projects of preservation of manuscripts (17th-18th centuries) from the Bishop's House of Jaffna funded by the Endangered Archival Programme of the British library. He is currently building a grammatical and lexical database of Tamil inscriptions, jointly organised by the Tamil Virtual Academy and CNRS-Mondes iranien et indien, Paris. He has been organising the International Workshop on Tamil Epigraphy since 2004. Read More Read Less