Network

About Us

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  Prof. Dr. Rose Marie Beck

  University of Leipzig,
  Germany

  Professor of Afrikanistik (Languages and Literatures)

• About:

  Prof. Dr. Rose Marie Beck is a linguistic anthropologist with interests in postcolonial linguistics and the sociology of linguistics. Her research interests have progressed from interaction and conversation analysis to ethnomethodology, praxeology and Science and Technology Studies. She has published about “speaking objects” and media in popular culture, HIV/AIDS prevention in Eastern Africa, on urban languages, language and development, and language philosophy. In 2010 she received an award for an article on HIV-prevention (Beck 2009, 2016) by the KfW for practically relevant development research, a study at the intersection of the sociology of knowledge production, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. Regionally she focuses on Eastern Africa and Swahili, Herero (Namibia), but with some interests in Central and Southern Africa. Empirically she works in the fields of Swahili Studies, urban studies, medical anthropology, science and technology studies. She is principal investigator in the project „Recalibrating Afrikanistik”, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation 2019-2026 (2027), and “Doing the City” (DFG, 2017-2020).

  
  

  Contact:

  	Visit Website
  	rmbeck@uni-leipzig.de
  	+49 (0)341 - 97 37031
  	office: 2.2.05 (house 2, 2nd floor, room 05) consultation hour: We. 9:00-11:00 pm and upon appointment

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  Prof. Christa van der Walt

  Univerity of Stellenbosh,
  South Africa

  Professor of Language Educatio, Department Curriculum Studies

• About:

  Christa van der Walt is a professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, where she is currently also Vice-Dean Research. She has a D Litt in Applied Linguistics from the University of Pretoria. Her interests focus on multilingual learning and teaching and the development of academic literacies. She received the prestigious Von Humboldt fellowship in 1996 and again in 2010 and 2017. She is the sole author of a book published in 2013 by Multilingual Matters, titled Multilingual Higher Education: Beyond English-medium Orientations. Her latest publication is a book that she co-edited with Prof David Palfreyman, titled Academic Biliteracies: Multilingual Repertoires in Higher Education.

  
  

  Contact:

  	Visit Website
  	+27 21 808 2284
  	Department Curriculum Studies Private Bag X1 Matieland 7602 Stellenbosch, South Africa

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  Prof. Dr. Clarissa Vierke

  University of Bayreuth,
  Germany

  Professor of Literatures in African Languages

• About:

  Clarissa Vierke, born in 1979, has been professor of Literatures in African Languages at the University of Bayreuth since 2014. With a scholarship of the German National Merit Foundation, she studied African Languages, Anthropology and Literatures in African Languages at the University of Bayreuth and the Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden. She wrote her PhD about the specific poetics of a narrative peotic genre from the Swahili Coast in Eastern Africa. Since then, she has worked on manuscript cultures in Eastern Africa and travelling texts along the East African Coast from Kenya to Mozambique and across the Indian Ocean. She has also expanded her interest in Aesthetics to focus on other poetic genres.

  In 2012, she won the Wissenschaftspreis of the University of Bayreuth and the Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz-prize of the German Research Council (DFG).

  
  

  Contact:

  	clarissa.vierke@uni-bayreuth.de
  	+49 (0)921 / 55-3550
  	University of Bayreuth Literatures in African languages 95440 Bayreuth Room: Room: 1.10 (GW I) Fax: +49 (0)921 / 55-3641​

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  Prof. Tom Mboya

  University of Moi,
  Kenya

  Associate Professor of African Literary and Popular Culture Studies

• About:

  The Moi University Focal Person for “Recalibrating Afrikanistik”, Tom Michael Mboya, is an Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Social Sciences of Moi University, Kenya, where he also had all his university schooling (BA, MPhil, DPhil), and a Research Associate of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Mboya is also the current Academic Coordinator of the Moi University African Cluster Centre (Moi–ACC) of the “Africa Multiple: Reconfiguring African Studies” Cluster of Excellence of the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Mboya researches the popular music of Kenya and East African literature in English. His scholarly articles have been published in Stichproben: Vienna Journal of African Studies; Matatu: Journal of African Culture and Society; Social Dynamics: Journal of African Cultural Studies; Postcolonial Text; Muziki: Journal of Music Research in Africa; Journal of Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies; The Nairobi Journal of Literature: the Journal of the Department of Literature, University of Nairobi; Chemchemi: International Journal of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences; The Egerton Journal of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education and Maarifa: A Journal of the Humanities and the Social Sciences. Mboya is a published poet and an award–winning short story writer. In addition, he has published extensively in the Kenyan mass media. Mboya’s national and international professional extension service includes External Examination duties for various universities; Peer Reviewing for several reputable journals; consultative work with education sector agencies of the Kenyan government, namely the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and the Kenya National Examinations Council (KNEC); and the mentorship of upcoming writers through forums like the National Book Development Council of Kenya.

  
  

  Contact:

  	Visit Website
  	+254 736 207409
  	Moi-ACC ICDC Building Moi University P.O. Box 3900 30100-Eldoret. Kenya

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  Brady Blackburn

  University of Bayreuth,
  Germany

  Research Associate

• About:

  Brady Blackburn is a research associate of literatures in African languages as part of the research project Recalibrating Afrikanistik. He studied English Literature during his undergraduate in Denver, USA, during which time he did a semester abroad at the University of Ghana, Legon before obtaining his MA in African Verbal and Visual Arts at the University of Bayreuth. He is currently pursuing his PhD, for which he is researching the publication of periodicals in African languages. His main research interests are the production and consumption of African-language literature with a particular focus on West African languages. He’s also fascinated by sociolinguistics, language ideologies, reading cultures, and LINGOs. In the background, he runs the NGO Untold International, which provides language arts resources and education in rural Ghana.

  
  

  Contact:

  Visit Website

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  Prof. Judith Mgbemena

  University of Wukari,
  Nigeria

  Professor of Sociolinguistics and English Studies

• About:

  My research interests include English language studies and sociolinguistics. I have conducted studies on Nigerian English with focus on the social and cultural influences on the development of English in the Nigerian situation and linguistic features of Nigerian English at various levels – phonological, lexical as well as pragmatics. The focus of my studies on sociolinguistics includes the multifarious sociocultural factors that influence variations and creativity in language use; the pragmatics and semiotics of language use in different linguistic contexts; language and conflict as well as the repertoires and linguistic practices of diverse groups especially in North East Nigeria.
  My research work also involves a project on the development of Jukun language. The project includes the documentation of different aspects of Jukun language and culture. One outcome of the project is the development of curriculum for the teaching of Jukun language in basic education in Nigeria. The curriculum has been approved by the government and put to use in primary schools in the community. The Jukun language development project group is currently working on the development of textbooks and primers to facilitate literacy skills in early grade classes.

  
  

  Contact:

  	Visit Website
  	+234 8036649795
  	Federal University Wukari 200 Katsina Ala Road Wukari Taraba State, Nigeria

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  Prof. Flavia Aiello

  University of Naples "L´Orientale",
  Italy

  Associate Professor of Swahili Language and Literature

• About:

  After a degree in modern foreign languages and literatures (German, English and French), Flavia Aiello studied African languages and literatures at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”, specialising in Swahili, where she also obtained a PhD with research on taarab sung poetry in Zanzibar. She taught Swahili language and literature at the University of Calabria for several years and then moved to “L’Orientale”, where she is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Asian, African and Mediterranean Studies. Her main interests are contemporary oral and written Swahili literature (including children’s literature) and translation (history, theory and practice). She has recently coordinated a research unit on Congolese Swahili varieties and their literary and artistic expressions, as part of a Project of Relevant National Interest funded by the Italian Ministry for Universities for the period 2017-2020. She has also worked on terminology and lexicography and is currently coordinating a project for the creation of an online Swahili-Italian dictionary. She is presently a member of the Executive Board of ASAI (Association for African Studies in Italy), the main association of Italian Africanists. She is the author of numerous publications in national and international journals and volumes, as well as some translations of modern Swahili literature, both prose and poetry.

  
  

  Contact:

  	Visit Website
  	faiello@unior.it
  	Dipartimento Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo, Palazzo Corigliano, Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, 80134, Napoli, Italy

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  Dr Martin Orwin

  University of Naples "L´Orientale",
  Italy

  Associate Professor of Somali Language and Literature

• About:

  Martin Orwin studied Arabic and Amharic at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London before turning to Somali and completing a PhD on the phonology of that language. Since the early 1990s he worked at SOAS teaching and researching Somali language and literature before moving to the University of Naples "L'Orientale" in 2020. His research focusses on language use in Somali poetry with a particular interest in metre and how Somali poetry reflects ideas of 'lyric' poetry as expressed in some of the wider literature on that subject. Another research interest is music on which he has written a little both theoretically and with regard to Somali poetry performance specifically. He is currently writing up ideas on the modes of performance of Somali poetry. He is a keen literary translator of Somali poetry into English and has published translations in a number of outlets and has written a little on that process.

  
  

  Contact:

  	Visit Website
  	morwin@unior.it
  	Dipartimento Asia, Africa e Mediterraneo, Palazzo Corigliano, Piazza San Domenico Maggiore, 80134, Napoli, Italy

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  Berenike Eichhorn

  University of Leipzig,
  Germany

  Project Coordinator

• About:

  Berenike Eichhorn is currently a master student and graduate assistant at the Institute of African Studies, University of Leipzig. She studied anthropology in her bachelor in Leipzig and has a research focus on East African and Swahili Studies, as well as posthumanism and urban studies. She is responsible for the coordination of fellowships and the reading group, the organisation of the Grant Application Workshops and co-produces the RecAf podcast series Afrikanists Assemble.

  
  

  Contact:

  	recaf@uni-leipzig.de
  	Beethovenstraße 15, 04109 Leipzig GWZ, Room 2201 +49 341 97-37036