Leo Wetzels is a Dutch linguist specializing in phonology, typology, and language documentation. He earned his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Leiden University and has held academic positions at several institutions, most notably as a professor at the University of Helsinki, Finland, where he is affiliated with the Department of Languages and a senior researcher at the Centre for Linguistics.
Wetzels’s research focuses on the interface between phonological theory and typological data, the phonetics–phonology relationship, and the documentation of under‑described languages. He has contributed to the development of feature‑geometry models and has worked on the phonological analysis of languages such as Khoisan, Austronesian, and Bantu languages. His publications include articles in peer‑reviewed journals, edited volumes, and contributions to conference proceedings. He has also served on editorial boards, including the journal Language.
In addition to his research, Wetzels is active in language documentation projects, collaborating with field linguists to produce descriptive grammars and lexical databases for endangered languages. His work is recognized for integrating theoretical phonology with empirical data from a wide range of linguistic typologies.
