Professor Hans Hock of the Department of Linguistics has received an Honorary Life Membership from the Societas Linguistica Europaea for his service to the society. He also received an Honorary Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) award from the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Pune, India. This honor was bestowed for his work in historical linguistics and Sanskrit.

The Societas Linguistica Europaea is The Linguistic Society of Europe. Its members may be Europeans and Non-Europeans. Its purpose is the advancement, in European countries and elsewhere, of the scientific study of language in all its aspects.

The Deccan College, Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Pune is the third oldest Educational Institute in India, founded in 1821 as the Hindoo College.

Professor Hock’s research interests include Indo-European and general historical linguistics, Sanskrit and South Asian linguistics, Contact linguistics, and Language and ideology.

He is the author of numerous books, including The languages and linguistics of South Asia: A comprehensive guide (Berlin DeGruyter Mouton 2016), and Veda and Vedic literature: Select papers from the panel on “Veda and Vedic Literature” at the 16th World Sanskrit Conference (New Delhi DKPublishers 2016).