Russell Barlow is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Under the Fulbright US Scholar Program (2019–2020), Russell is documenting, describing, and analyzing the Suwawa language of Gorontalo province in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Suwawa is a highly endangered and under-documented language spoken by fewer than 5,000 people. It contains a number of typologically unusual grammatical features, the detailed analysis of which may lend insights into some of the universal cognitive underpinnings of human language.

Russell’s previous research experiences have included documenting and describing several languages of the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea, studying both contemporary grammatical structures and the historical relationships among these languages. He has also conducted research in Indo-European historical linguistics in Münster, Germany under the US Fulbright Student Program (2013–2014).