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

Teaching

I am open to supervising BA and MA theses focused on or incorporating African languages. Reach out to me if you're interested!

My teaching philosophy sees courses as a space for collaborative knowledge acquisition, open discussion, and opportunities for students to contribute to the discourse on a topic. Interested students can reach out to me with any questions. Everyone is welcome. I teach my courses in English and encourage discussions in any language students feel most comfortable speaking or writing.

In the 2025 Summer Semester, I offer the following courses:

• Introduction to the Languages of Africa explores the diversity, grammatical structure, and societal roles of African languages through lectures, hands-on exercises, and discussions.
• Language in East Africa is a weekly meeting where, together, we learn about the region's languages, sociolinguistics, and language policies. Along the way, we develop and integrate students' personal projects into a collaborative essay collection (participation in this collection is optional).
• Together with Laurel Braddock and Lamine Doumbia: the Role of African Studies in (Berlin) Society reflects on African Studies in Berlin through student-led (participation in) events, collaborations with Afro-Diasporic / Afro-Migrant organizations, and reflective discussions.

Research

I'm a linguist specializing in African languages, with particular expertise in language in Nigeria.

My work focuses on documenting endangered or understudied languages. My research and publications have contributed to the description and analysis of Kam, a Niger-Congo language spoken in Central-Eastern Nigeria. My recent research on kam emphasizes natural interaction and community-driven ethnographic documentation.

I also research remote collaboration methods (also called distributed fieldwork or remote fieldwork) for language documentation, which makes language documentation less dependent on travel and has, among others, potential to create more equitable partnerships in African linguistics.

In addition to my expertise in African languages, I contribute to linguistic typology through my work on typological databases like Grambank. My publications have highlighted gaps in grammatical descriptions and the insights that can be gained from using typological databases for cross-linguistic comparison.

My research also explores the history and spread of languages, words, and concepts in sub-Saharan Africa through interdisciplinary approaches. This involves identifying layers of language contact, applying historical linguistics, and tracing the spread of cultural and technological vocabulary such as words for 'iron'.

Student advising

I'm currently the Student Advisor for the African Studies department. My office hours are on Tuesdays from 13:00 to 15:00 during the teaching period. If these times don’t work for you, I’m happy to arrange a meeting outside of office hours, either in person, online, or by phone. Feel free to send me an e-mail to schedule an appointment.