ISABELLE BRIL is a linguist. She completed her PhD in Linguistics in 1994. She was a Lecturer at the University of Tours in France, and subsequently has been a Research Director at the CNRS (the French National Center of Scientific Research) since 2001.

She began her work on the large family of Austronesian languages that stretch throughout the Pacific Ocean. In 1991, she initiated her research into two of New Caledonia's 28 Kanak languages. Most recently in 2011, she began researching one of Taiwan's 14 Austronesian languages.