Ghilyana Dordzhieva is an ethnomusicologist and a researcher of the traditional Kalmyk music. Currently, she is a scholar in residence for the Mongol-American Cultural Association. In 2002-2006 she lectured on the music of ethnic minorities of the Russian Federation at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and the Saint Petersburg State University for the Art and Culture. Ghilyana's scientific articles, CD ‘Tsagan’, and book were dedicated to the Kalmyk long songs and oral stories. The essential part of her fieldwork since 1991 has always been direct observation and personal interaction with native speakers.
Ghilyana is Kalmyk by origin, but the Kalmyk language is not her first language, due to the education system in the Kalmyk Republic being conducted in Russian. By recording folklore and traditional performers, Ghilyana connected with the beauty of the Kalmyk language and the urgency to gain a deeper understanding of her mother tongue. She would like to share the joy of learning, understanding, and communicating in her native language and wishes to aid and unite the elder full speakers with the younger generations who want to learn the Kalmyk language.

The Kalmyk language, also known as Kalmyk-Oirat, is a language of the Mongolic family spoken in the Republic of Kalmykia, Russian Federation, and in diaspora communities in the United States and Europe. Once existing as a confederation of nomadic states, the Oirats have been scattered as ethnic minorities in Mongolia, China, and Russia since the 18th century. Historically, the Kalmyk-American diaspora was formed by immigrants escaping the Russian Revolution and World War II, many settling in New Jersey. In 2022, many young Kalmyk families left the Russian Federation to escape war and mobilization and resettled in the US.

Since the late 18th century, the Russian Empire has gradually chipped away at the autonomy of Kalmyk statehood and weakened the vitality of the Kalmyk language. Under Soviet Russia, the classical script of the Kalmyk language, Todo Bichig, was replaced by Cyrillic. In 1943-1957, the entire Kalmyk population was exiled to Siberia; upon their return in 1957, the Kalmyk language was replaced by Russian as the language of instruction in schools. More recently in 2015, the Russian government (Duma) adopted a resolution that made the study of minority languages in public schools optional, making it more difficult to teach and learn the Kalmyk language as part of the school curriculum. These actions have profoundly impacted the health of the language today: there are an estimated 80,000 native speakers, mostly aged, out of 170,000 Kalmyks living in the Russian Federation.

In recent years, language activists in Kalmykia have begun taking steps toward language documentation and revitalization. However, there are no revitalization efforts focused on the English-speaking Kalmyk-American diaspora, primarily living in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Ghilyana Dordzhieva has been filling this gap by organizing online Kalmyk conversational classes since 2020. During this cohort year with Wikitongues, Ghilyana and her colleagues will continue developing this work by creating Kalmyk language course materials, starting with a 21-unit textbook. The textbook will be geared towards all types of language learners, with texts and dialogue for reading and speaking practice, vocabulary lists, homework exercises, and a website with supplementary audiovisual material.