On Friday June 21 at 10am CET, Lorenzo Maselli will publically defended the joint PhD dissertation titled “Documenting the sounds of the West-Coastal Bantu languages of the Lower Kasai region (DR Congo): An integrated phonetic and diachronic-phonological approach” written under the co-supervision of Prof. Dr. Koen Bostoen (BantUGent), Prof. Dr. Sara Pacchiarotti (BantUGent), and Prof. Dr. Véronique Delvaux (UMons). The defense took place in the Faculty Room on the first floor of the Blandijn building (Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent) and could also be followed via livestreaming through MS Teams. The jury was presided by Prof. Jo Van Steenbergen and further included Prof. Nancy Kula (ULeiden), Prof. Rachid Ridouane (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – CNRS, Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie), Dr. Abbie Hangtan-Sonko (CNRS, LLACAN), Prof. Kathy Huet (UMons), Prof. Claudia Crocco (UGent) and Prof. Shola Adenekan (UGent).
On Friday 17 May, the LHEAf research team from Leiden University will visit Ghent for a joint workshop with BantUGent on the fascinating world of Africa’s early linguistic history. On the program: exploring language contact, diagnosing substrate, and placing linguistic findings in an interdisciplinary context. Be welcome to join the workshop.
Contact: nina.vandervlugt@ugent.be
9am-12pm: Faculty Council Room, Blandijn
Introductions
9.15-9.45am
Introductions BantUGent and LHEAf
LHEAf project: Unravelling Africa’s Early Linguistic History
Diagnosing Substrate
10-10.45am Substrate Interference in Bantu languages of Central Africa: Insights from Diachronic Phonology — Sara Pacchiarotti
11am-12pm Substrate Interference in Eastern Africa — Dominique Loviscach, Alba Hermida Rodriguez, Maarten Mous
12-1.30pm: Lunch break
1.30-5pm: Room 3.1, Tweekerken, Campus Tweekerken
Language contact
1.30-2.15pm (Pre)historic Bantu-Khoisan interactions in Southern Africa in a historical linguistic perspective — Hilde Gunnink
2.30-3.15pm The Bantu Expansion in Eastern Africa — Maarten Mous
Interdisciplinary research
3.30-4.15pm Bantu Language divergence and convergence and deep-time population history in the Lower Kasai area (DR Congo) — Koen Bostoen
4.15-5pm: From linguistic to interdisciplinary research in Eastern Africa
Maps are an important visualization tool for linguists. However, most linguists are not trained in and thus not able to design professional maps. QGIS is opensource mapping software that enables its users to plot features, create data points, or redraw existing maps. For researchers that work with little known languages, software like QGIS is vital in providing reliable maps when there are often none available.
To this end, Matthew Sung (affiliated with the Leiden University Centre of Linguistics and the Leiden University Centre for Digital Humanities) taught several QGIS workshops at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy from 21 May – 23 May 2024. Participants will also apply the software to their own data. The introduction session was run twice on 21 May and 22 May. Each session could have up to 20 participants. The advanced session was run once on 23 May and had availability for 15 people. Registration closed on 15 April 2024.
As this event was financed by the Doctoral School of UGent and the Flemish Government, doctoral students were given priority during registration. If PhD students participated in the introduction session, it counted as a transferable skill course. If PhD students participated in both the introduction and advanced session, it counted as a specialist course. Evaluation for PhD students were based on attendance and active participation.
The organizer was Nina van der Vlugt (nina.vandervlugt@ugent.be). See below for the program.
11:00-13:00: Simon Nsielanga Tukumu: The Decolonization of the Society of Jesus in the Belgian Congo in the post-World War II: Reasons behind the opening of the Jesuit Novitiate in Djuma
To join the meeting online by MS Teams, click here.
En collaboration avec l’Africa Platform de l’Université de Gand (UGent) et l’Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de Mbuji-Mayi, nous organisons le 19 octobre 2023 une journée de présentation des projets de recherche en RDC. Pour plus d’informations voir ici. Pour vous inscrire, veuillez envoyer un email à Annelies.Verdoolaege@UGent.be ou emmanuel.kambaji@gmail.com.
