Professor Anvita Abbi is the only scholar in the Indian subcontinent to have conducted field studies on all six language families spanning from the Himalayas to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In 2003–2004, she identified the previously unknown Great Andamanese language family. Anvita was awarded the Padma Shri in 2013 and the Kenneth Hale Award in 2015 for her work. She taught linguistics at Jawaharlal Nehru University for 38 years and has served as President of the Linguistic Society of India and as a UNESCO expert on languages.