Ouïghour
Abduweli Ayup is a linguist specializing in Uyghur language education. He is a strong proponent of linguistic human rights, specifically, the right for the intergenerational transmission of language and culture. From December 2005 to June 2006, Abduweli was a visiting scholar at Ankara University, Turkey. He later received a Ford Foundation fellowship to study at the University of Kansas in the United States, and completed his master's degree in Linguistics in 2011. Upon graduation, Abduweli returned to Xinjiang and opened schools to teach the Uyghur language, his mother tongue.