Documentarian, Fulbright Scholar, Harvard Graduate, world traveler, and Hmong musician.
About Me
My name is Neng Thao, ???????????? ????????????????, and I am a practitioner and scholar of Hmong musical surrogate languages. I graduated from Harvard with my bachelor’s degree in Human Developmental and Regenerative Biology and was awarded a Fulbright Research Grant in linguistics, which I completed in 2023.
Currently, I am interested in how the brain’s language network processes and sequences the sounds of musical surrogate speech. Using neuroimaging such as fMRI and MEG might help us understand the neurobiological ways in which surrogate languages push the limits of human communication. Is the language network plastic enough to process language-based music? What is the overlap of a surrogate language vs. a second/third/etc. language(s) within the brain? And how are surrogate language speakers able to perceive and produce these seemingly arbitrary sounds as words??
My research has allowed me to travel to over 100 different countries and be invited to speak at over 50 universities, conferences, and organizations all around the world. I am fluent in two dialects of Hmong and can “speak” several musical surrogate languages on nine different instruments. I am also a Hmong kwv txhiaj/lug txaj singer, which are vocal genres of music that belong to different linguistic registers on the surrogate-to-spoken language spectrum.
Aside from research, I have many passion projects. As a surrogate language musician, I run a small Hmong instrument shop. In 2021, I founded Gaur, the first project dedicated to reclaiming Hmong antiques; I have since amassed the largest collection of antique Hmong flintlocks in the world. I wrote, illustrated, and published the first book to explain the big bang theory to preschoolers, Georgia’s Telescope. I have made three documentaries and won several art awards including a Blue Chair Film Festival grant, a DANG! grant, and a Doodle4Google finalist award. In 2019, I was one of five international recipients of the Hmong American Partnership Community Impact Award—given to those recognized as “A changemaker who is advancing the Hmong community.”
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