Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften

Werdegang

Employment history

2023 -

Lecturer in African linguistics, as Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter at the Seminar für Afrikawissenschaften, Humboldt University, Berlin
2022-2023

Teacher of Dutch at Kaj Munk College, Hoofddorp (The Netherlands)
2021-2022 Postdoctoral researcher, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany (Endangered Languages Documentation Project). Project: “Documentation of Kam: Natural interaction, multimodality, and community-driven ethnographic documentation.”, see https://www.elararchive.org/dk0652/.
2020-2021 Research collaborator, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany (Grambank project).
2016-2020 PhD researcher, LLACAN, CNRS, Paris.
2016 Research assistant, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany (Grambank project).
2015 Research assistant, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, (Grambank project).

PhD thesis supervision

2024-present Olga Olina – Jirim Voices: Documentation and Description of Jirim Language and Traditions. An ELDP-funded PhD project. Supervision together with Tom Güldemann. Note: in Germany, I cannot be officially given the status of supervisor without professorship. The role remains the same.

Teaching and organization of seminars

2024-2025 Language in West Africa, BA course for students of Asian and African Studies and students of Linguistics at Humboldt University.
2024 Language in Southern Africa, BA course for students of Asian and African Studies and students of Linguistics at Humboldt University.
2024 Language in East Africa, BA course for students of Asian and African Studies and students of Linguistics at Humboldt University.
2023-2024 Introduction to the Languages of Africa, BA course for students of Asian and African Studies and students of Linguistics at Humboldt University.
2023-2024 Language in West Africa, BA course for students of Asian and African Studies and students of Linguistics at Humboldt University.
2022 Guest lecturer at a training for ELDP grantees in Berlin (June 14th, 2022); I lectured about remote field work methods for language documentation.
2021-2022 Organizer of and presenter at a monthly seminar on fieldwork methods for PhD students at LLACAN and LACITO, Paris.  See https://lacito.cnrs.fr/en/scientific-activities/operations-and-seminars/phd-practical-seminar-lacito-llacan/.
2021 Development of courses on language documentation for native speaker collaborators in Nigeria in the framework of the Kam Documentation Project. Includes computer training, filming, metadata training, and transcription and annotation training.
2020 Organization of weekly online PhD meetings and presentations during the COVID-19 lockdown at LLACAN, CNRS, Paris.

Fieldwork experience

2021-present 2 months in central-eastern Nigeria, with continued remote collaboration on Kam, with the Kam community.
2018 2 weeks of survey work in central-eastern Nigeria on Chamba Donga, Como Karim, and Jirim.
2016-2018 8 months in central-eastern Nigeria and western Nigeria, working with the Kam community.

Academic service and editorial duties

2020-present Regular reviewer for various peer-reviewed journals (Linguistics, Language in Africa, Linx (FR)), edited volumes, conference proceedings, and grant rounds (ELDP). As a general rule, at this stage in my career, I try to review two publications or grant applications per publication/conference abstract/grant application I have submitted for review myself. I hope to increase this ratio as my career becomes more established.
2016-present Member of the Grambank team of the Glottobank consortium at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena.
2024 Member of tenure track committee at Humboldt University Berlin.
2019 Member of the department council of LLACAN, CNRS, Paris.
2018 Member of an external reviewing committee of the BA program in language and linguistics and of the MA program in linguistics of the University of Leuven, Leuven.

Work in progress

  • Language documentation of Kam, and language documentation methodology, with publications planned and in progress on distributed fieldwork (or remote collaboration) for language documentation and description, with a focus on, but not limited to Nigeria.
  • Grammatical analyisis of Kam and other languages in central eastern Nigeria (e.g. Baa, Jukunoid languages, Mumuye), with publications planned and in progress on phonological inventories, tone analysis, serial verb constructions, and the noun phrase.
  • Historical linguistics of Adamawa languages, languages in central eastern Nigeria, and Niger-Congo languages, with publications planned and in progress on the historical linguistic classification of Kam, contact layers in central eastern and northeastern Nigeria, and a historical linguistic approach to words for ‘iron’ in Africa.
  • Language typology in Africa and beyond, with publications planned and in progress on number marking in African languages, gaps in global typological databases, and evaluating definitions of ‘word’ for cross-linguistic analyses.
  • Popularizing research on African languages for Africans and African diaspora, with a publication in progress that intends to be a ‘popular science’ collection of essays by African Studies and Linguistics students on language in West Africa accessible to a wide audience.