 In September 1999 he testified before the Australian Senate Inquiry on East Timor on abuses he had witnessed in that country during past visits.From 2001 to 2007 he was research and publications director of the Instituto Nacional de Linguística, the national language authority of the independent state of Timor-Leste.He was the designer, principal author and editor of the national Tetum dictionary and was founder and co-editor of the academic journal "Estudos de Línguas e Culturas de Timor-Leste".