• Indo-European Historical Linguistics
• Tocharian Historical Linguistics
• Tocharian Lexicography

Douglas Adams has been a professor in the English Department at the University of Idaho since 1972. Currently he teaches in the department’s Teaching English as a Second Language master’s program. He has served in a number of administrative posts: of the faculty 1992-1996, and again 2004-2008, chair of the English Department 1996-2000, editor of the Faculty-Staff Handbook 1992-2002, director of the institutional self-study for accreditation 2002-2004. He has authored numerous articles and books on historical linguistics.

• [in progress, a complete revision of ] A Dictionary of Tocharian B (Leiden Studies in Indo-European). Amsterdam and Atlanta, Rodopi, 1999.
• The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World, with J. P. Mallory. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006
• “Some Implications of the Carbon-14 Dating of Tocharian Manuscripts,” Journal of Indo-European Studies 34 (2006[2007]):381-389
• “Etymological Connections for the Tocharian Word for ‘Village’ and the Germanic Word for ‘House’.” Journal of Indo-European Studies 34 (2006[2007]):390-399
• “Tocharian B traksim ‘Grains’ and an Indo-European Word for ‘Berry.’” Journal of Indo-European Studies 33 (2005[2006]):219-226.
• “Patterns of Stress and Rhythm in Tocharian B Prosody.” In Language in Time and Space: A Festschrift for Werner Winter on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday, pp. 1-11. Edd. Brigitte L.M. Bauer and Georges-Jean Pinault. Berlin and New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 2003.
• “‘Give to Drink’ in Tocharian B and the Reflexes of the PIE Causative.” Tocharian and Indo-European Studies 10 (2003):1-10.
• “Some Observations of Peoples, Places and Languages in the Tarim Basin in the First Millennium AD.” Tocharian and Indo-European Studies (2000) 9:1-28.

• University of Idaho Research Award (2004)