James Clackson is a British linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 and Indo-Europeanist

Indo-European studies

Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. Its goal is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European , and its speakers, the...

.

He works as a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, and is also a Fellow and Director of Studies, Jesus College

Jesus College, Cambridge

Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The College was founded in 1496 on the site of a Benedictine nunnery by John Alcock, then Bishop of Ely...

 at Cambridge.

He studied at Cambridge under Robert Coleman, and his Ph.D. thesis served as a basis for his 1994 book The Linguistic Relationship between Armenian and Greek. His research interest include ancient Languages of the Italian peninsula (Latin, Sabellian

Osco-Umbrian languages

The Osco-Umbrian languages or Sabellic languages are a group of languages that belong to the Italic language family of the Indo-European languages. They were spoken in central and southern Italy before Latin replaced them as the power of the Romans expanded...

, Etruscan

Etruscan language

The Etruscan language was spoken and written by the Etruscan civilization, in what is present-day Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria and in parts of Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna...

), Indo-European linguistics, Latin linguistics, Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 linguistics and Armenian

Armenian language

The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...

.

Books

• The Linguistic Relationship between Armenian and Greek (Oxford, 1994)
• Indo-European Word Formation (co-edited with Birgit Anette Olson, Copenhagen, 2004)
• The Blackwell History of the Latin Language (with Geoff Horrocks, Oxford, 2007)
• Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2007)