On Thursday November 24 Koen Bostoen & Guy Kouarata represent BantUGent on the “Meet the Ambassadors Event — Celebrating 15 years of AUGent Africa Platform” organized by the AUGent Africa Platform at Het Pand, Onderbergen 1, 9000 Ghent. The event’s program is available here. Their presentation can be downloaded here.
Within the program of his exchange research stay in Tokyo as part of the FWO-JSPS-funded collaborative project between ILCAA and BantUGent on “The Past and Present of Bantu Languages: Integrating Micro-Typology, Historical-Comparative Linguistics and Lexicography“, Lorenzo Maselli (BantUGent) gives a talk on his PhD research at the Tokyo African Linguistics Knot.
Prof P. Kapagama & Prof G. Mvumbi Lelo in charge of international partnerships at Kinshasa University visited Ghent University for a meet and greet at Het Pand on Thursday 20 October 2022 from 14h-16h30. Peter Coutros (BantUGent), Guy Kouarata (BantUGent), and Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) briefly presented ongoing BantuFirst research in the DRC in close collaboration with Prof. Igor Matonda from Kinshasa University (UNIKIN). Vicky Van Bockhaven from the African Studies Department also talked about the ongoing Afrisurge and Congolines projects she is supervising in collaboration with Congolese universities (e.a. Université de l’Uélé).
Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) co-authored a chapter on the Kongo Kingdom for a Belgian 4th grade secondary school textbook (Dutch) on the history of the 16th century. In an accompanying video he explains in Dutch how scholars reconstruct ancient African history and how they rely on language sources for this endeavor.
Peter Coutros (BantUGent, BantuFirst project) has just returned from an archaeological field mission in the DRC. Between August 16 and September 29, Dr. Coutros and Prof. Igor Matonda Sakala (UniKin & BantUgent associate) returned with their team to the Kwilu and Kasai Rivers for continued research and community outreach. This year, they were conducting survey of new areas as well as returning for more intensive investigations at locations identified during the 2021 mission. More than 50 new sites were identified – dating from the Middle Stone Age through the Early Iron Age – and excavations were conducted at numerous sites along the two rivers.
From September 13 until October 4, 2022, Prof. Jean-Pierre Donzo (ISP-Gombe, Kinshasa & BantUGent) & Marie-Faustine Beloko (ISP-Gombe, Kinshasa) carry out a BantuFirst fieldwork mission amongst several Batwa or Pygmy communities in the Lomela territory of DRC’s Sankuru Province. They aim at inventorizing and mapping the different Batwa languages in that part of the DRC and collecting audo recordings of basic lexical and grammatical data in those Bantu languages. It is an exploratory mission to prepare a more in-depth documentation project.
On 6 September 2022, Mandela Kaumba Mazanga successfully defended in Brussels her PhD thesis titled Production et circulation de la céramique des trois derniers siècles dans l’aire kongo : une approche combinée des données ethnographiques, muséales et archéologiques. Her joint UGent-ULB PhD project co-supervised by Koen Bostoen (BantUGent), Pierre de Maret (ULB) and Olivier Gosselain (ULB) started as part of the ERC-funded KongoKing project. Following her successful defense, Mandela Kaumba Mazanga resumed her professional activities at the Department of Historical Sciences of Lubumbashi University (DRC).
At the 23rd Biennial International Conference of The African Languages Association of Southern Africa, which takes place at the University of the Western Cape September 21-24, Hilde Gunnink (BantUGent), Natalia Chousou-Polydouri (University of Zürich) & Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) will give a talk titled “The population history of Southern Africa: insights from linguistic subclassification“. The full draft program is available here.
On August 29, 2022, Sara Pacchiarotti (BantUGent) and Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) were invited at the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de la Gombe in Kinshasa to talk about BantUGent research on the Bantu Expansion. Their talk was titled “L’occupation ancienne de l’Afrique centrale par les Bantouphones: recherches linguistiques et archéologiques“. Prof. Jean-Pierre Donzo (ISP-Gombe & BantUGent associate) animated the talk and the lively debate that followed.
From August 6 until August 30, 2022, Sara Pacchiarotti & Koen Bostoen are on a BantuFirst mission in the DRC. They mainly stay with Prof. Joseph Koni Muluwa (ISP Kikwit & BantUGent associate) in Kikwit where they are doing linguistic fieldwork on several West-Coastal Bantu languages, most notably Eastern and Western Ngwi (B861). They also teach classes in Methods in Linguistic Research (Sara) and Comparative Bantu Linguistics (Koen) at the MA1 students of the English and African Cultures program at the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de Kikwit. In Kinshasa they work with Prof. Jean-Pierre Donzo Yugia (ISP-Gombe & BantUGent associate) on other West-Coastal Bantu languages, mainly Northern Boma (B82).
