Op zondag 27 april van 10u tot 12u geeft Maud Devos (KMMA/BantUGent) een openbare lezing over het Swahili op uitnodiging van de gemeente Tervuren.
Author: Koen Bostoen
Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen talk at Princeton Phonology Forum (PɸF 2025)
On April 18-19, 2025, the fourth meeting of the Princeton Phonology Forum (PɸF 2025) took place at Princeton University (New Jersey, USA). The theme for PɸF 2025 was Sound Patterns and Human History. The workshop brought together scholars whose research examines the connection between human history, events, and migration (as evidenced from oral history, archeology, genetics, etc.) and large-scale areal zones of sound system convergence. BantUGent was present with two talks:
- Koen Bostoen “West-Coastal Bantu diachronic phonology and deep-time population contact in the Lower Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo“
- Sara Pacchiarotti “The lexicon and phonology of Fulu: insights into the population history of a small-scale Central Sudanic language spoken in northwestern DR Congo“
BantUGent authors rebut recent Nature Human Behaviour paper on Central African hunter-gatherers
In a rebuttal to the Padilla-Iglesias et al. (2024) paper published in the Nature Human Behaviour journal, the BantUGent scholars Hilde Gunnink, Sara Pacchiarotti, Guy Kouarata, Paulin Baraka Bose and Koen Bostoen refute the claim that ten Central African Hunter-Gatherer communities share a history of genetic, cultural, and linguistic evolution, that started many millennia before the first food producers settled in the Congo basin. Padilla-Iglesias et al. (2024) base this claim on comparative evidence from musical instruments, foraging tools, specialized vocabulary and genome-wide data. Hilde Gunnink and colleagues consider the linguistic evidence for this hypothesis unsubstantiated because (1) the historical-linguistic methodology of Padilla-Iglesias et al. (2024) is flawed, and (2) much relevant data were overlooked. As Nature Human Behaviour has not published yet their rebuttal titled “Central African Hunter-Gatherer Music Lexicon Does Not Predate the Bantu Expansion” (submitted on June 26, 2024), Hilde Gunnink and colleagues published a pre-print on SocArXiv, the open archive of the social sciences.
Prof. Charles Kumbatulu Sita Bangbasa (Kisangani University) visits BantUGent
On March 25, 2025, Prof. Charles Kumbatulu Sita Bangbasa (Kisangani University) honored BantUGent with a visit together with his assistant Brandy Ntumba Tshimanga (Kisangani University). Prof. Kumbatulu is on a short research stay in Belgium for the PhD defense of David Kopa wa Kopa at Brussels University (ULB).
Lorenzo Maselli holds public conference at Université de Bangui
On March 26th, 2025, Lorenzo Maselli held a public conference at Université de Bangui to present the work, activities, and data collected during a two-month fieldwork mission in the Central African Republic within the framework of their postdoctoral research and an ongoing partnership between the Université de Bangui and Ghent in the context of the ERC project CongUbangi hosted at Ghent University. The collection of aerodynamic data during this mission was made possible by the collaboration with Université de Mons (UMONS). Click here for more information. The radio-broadcasting of this event can be found here in French and Sango.
Lis Kerr receives FEL grant for Átɔmb documentation and revitalisation
Congratulations to Lis Kerr (BantUGent, MBAM project) for receiving a small grant from the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) to make the first audio recordings of Átɔmb (Tuotomb, ISO 639-3 ttf), an endangered Mbam Bantu language spoken by <300 people in central Cameroon. The project aims to lay the foundations for further work on a community dictionary and grammar sketch. The project was set in motion with a successful first visit to the Boneck village in March 2025, as pictured.
Lis Kerr talks at the University of Yaoundé I
During her ongoing fieldwork in Ndikiniméki (Cameroon), our post-doc Lis Kerr took time to travel to Yaoundé to give a talk for masters / PhD students and staff at the Department of African Languages and Linguistics of the University of Yaoundé 1. She talked on the topic of OV/VO word order in Cameroonian Bantu/Bantoid languages.
Koen Bostoen offers training on Central African history to secondary school teachers
Upon invitation of the Eekhout Academy, Koen Bostoen offered training on ancient Central African history, more specifically the Bantu Expansion, to secondary school history teachers. The workshop took place at KULAK in Kortrijk on Thursday February 6, 2025.
Maud Devos talks on the Tetela archives of UGent Professor John Jacobs at Brussels University
On February 5, 2025, between 2pm and 4pm, Maud Devos (RMCA-BantUGent) talks at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains (LAMC) Brussels University (ULB) on the colonial Tetela archives of the former UGent professor John Jacobs. Her talk is titled “”Les archives Tetela du linguiste colonial Belge John Jacobs: perspectives historiques et contemporains“.
BantUGent research on the 2024 World Neolithic Congress in Şanlıurfa (Türkiye)
From November 4 to 8 the 2024 World Neolithic Congress in Şanlıurfa (Türkiye) united specialists from around the world to discuss diverse Neolithic formations that took place across different geographical locations in different time-frames following diverse cultural and socio-economic trajectories. BantUGent was also present. Koen Bostoen was invited to talk on the Bantu Expansion in a panel titled “Foraging to Food Production and The Consequences: A Global Review” organized by Peter Bellwood and Hsiao-Chun Hung. He presented a joint talk with Peter Coutros & Jessamy Doman on the “The Bantu Expansion and low-level food production in Central Africa“, which combined a review of existent research with recent insights from the BantuFirst project in the Kwilu-Kasai area of the DRC.
