Our Team

Maarten Mous

Project leader

Maarten Mous is professor of African linguistics at Leiden University. His PhD thesis (1992) was a Grammar of Iraqw, a Cushitic language of Tanzania and he continues to work on this language. He has worked on several languages of Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia (and in West Africa), both synchronically and diachronically. Over 50 PhD theses have been completed under his responsibility. He is the PI of the project. See more

Mulugeta Seyoum

Sub-project leader

Dr. Mulugeta Seyoum is an associate professor in Linguistics at Addis Ababa University. He served the Academy of Ethiopian Language and Cultures as Director and led various projects on orthography development of Maale, Dime and other languages in Southern Ethiopia. He earned an MPhil from NTNU, Trondheim (2001) and a PhD from Leiden University (2008). See more

Christian Rapold 

Postdoc

Christian Rapold is a postdoc in Project 1. He previously worked on Khoekhoe (Khoe, a.k.a Central Khoisan) as a postdoc, on Bench (Omotic) for his PhD, and Lingala (Bantu) for his MA. Before joining the project, he was assistant professor in General and Comparative Linguistics at the University of Regensburg.

Ahmed Sosal

PhD candidate

Ahmed Sosal is a PhD candidate at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. He completed his BA in Linguistics at the University of Khartoum. He did his MA studies in Linguistics at the University of Cape Town. Ahmed is reconstructing the phonology and lexicon of Proto Core Cushitic as part of project 2 (PhD). See more

Samuel Beer

Researcher

Samuel Beer is a lecturer at the University of Leiden and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Virginia. He works with speakers of Kuliak languages from northeastern Uganda. His most recent research centers around the social contexts in which legacy data was collected and the social contexts in which it can be most beneficially returned to communities from which it was extracted.

Andrew Harvey

Researcher

Andrew Harvey is a Junior Professor in the Faculty of Languages and Literatures at the University of Bayreuth. His interests include the languages of the Tanzanian rift, their documentation and description, their morphosyntax, and the histories and cultures of their speaker communities, especially as evinced through linguistic arts and language contact. See more

Alba Hermida

Rodríguez

Research assistant

Alba Hermida Rodríguez is a research assistant at Leiden University. Her BA studies centered on acoustic and experimental phonetics and phonology. Later, during her ResMA at Leiden, she specialized in language documentation and contact, focusing her thesis on phonological language obsolescence. Her work has taken her to the fascinating languages of South America (Andes and Chaco) and East Africa (Tanzania). As a research assistant in the project, she investigates Sandawe’s language contact, in order to shed light on the overall early inhabitance of East Africa.

Nina van der Vlugt

Research assistant

Nina van der Vlugt was a research assistant who obtained her Research MA degree from Leiden University. She is specialized in descriptive linguistics, anthropological linguistics, and historical linguistics of African languages, with a focus on Southern Bantu. Her MA thesis was about the role of inheritance and contact in the development of lateral obstruents in Nguni (Southern Bantu) languages. In the LHEAF project, she mainly researched non-Bantu influence on East African Bantu languages, which she will continue to do during her PhD research on the origin and evolution of Shona languages at BantUGent (Ghent University, Belgium).

Josiah Medin

Research assistant

Josiah Medin is interested in historical phonology and sound change in a variety of different language families including Sino-Tibetan, Indo-European, and Afroasiatic. In the context of LHEAf, he is investigating apparent linguistic parallels between Hadza, a language isolate, and the Chadic branch of Afroasiatic in order to attempt to determine whether or not the correspondences between them are beyond those which could reasonably arise due to chance. 

Jeroen van

Ravenhorst

Research assistant

Jeroen van Ravenhorst is a Research Master’s student in Linguistics at Leiden University, specializing in language description, documentation, anthropological linguistics, and lexicography. As part of the LHEAf project, his research delves into the history of the South Omotic languages (Hamar, Aari, Dime, Kara), with a particular emphasis on their lexicon.

Sjef van Lier

Research assistant

Sjef van Lier did a bachelor in African Studies and Middle Eastern Studies. He mastered in Linguistics as Leiden University. He is interested in Somaloid languages and historical linguistics in general. For this project he is researching the possibility of reconstructing a word for donkey in Proto-Cushitic.

Dominique

Loviscach

Research assistant

Dominique Loviscach did a Research Master in Linguistics at Leiden University. Having specialized in East African languages throughout her studies, her MA thesis investigated Differential Object Marking in Kîîtharaka (Central Kenya Bantu). As a research assistant in the project, she supports the other members in their tasks, and investigates the history of the early people in East Africa.

Giulia Zhang

Research assistant

Giulia Zhang obtained her Master’s degree in Linguistics at University of Turin and is currently a PhD candidate at University of Pavia. Her interests are: African languages, language description and documentation, and anthropological linguistics. During her internship in the Lheaf project, she worked on the Aasax language’s grammar and dictionary.

Firew Elias Gezze

Research assistant

Firew Elias Gezze is a lecturer of Linguistics at Arba Minch University. He obtained an MA degree from Addis Ababa University (The acoustic duration of vowels in Wolaytta, Omotic), and a BA from Mekelle University. Firew has a keen interest in Language Reconstruction, Language Typology and Experimental Phonetics. He is working on project 3 Comparative Southern Omotic (PhD).

Giorgia Zantei

Research assistant

Giorgia Zantei is at her last year of master’s degree in Linguistics in University of Bologna. Her main research interest is word order in noun and verb phrase in African Languages. She is currently doing her internship within the project, where she is working on the unusual Inf-Aux order in two SVO Bantu languages, Mbugwe and Rangi.

Iris Kruijsdijk

Research assistant

Iris Kruijsdijk was Research Master Linguistics student at Leiden University. She is specialized in East African languages and wrote her BA thesis on the noun class agreement system in the Kenyan Gĩchuka language. In the project, she was a research assistant and supported the other members in their tasks.

Terrill Schrock

Researcher

Terrill Schrock is an independent researcher with field experience working on several Bantu, Eastern Nilotic, and Kuliak languages in Uganda. For his PhD at Leiden, he wrote a grammar of Ik. In this project, Terrill studied Ik etymology for clues of how Kuliak has interacted historically with other East African languages.

Marta Cestari

Research assistant

Marta Cestari  was a Master Linguistics student at Leiden University. She is specialized in Theoretical Linguistics, with a focus on Syntax and Pragmatics. In the project, she was a research assistant researching on kinship terminology in Bantu languages, and how these systems have changed and shifted through time.

Franciscus Mulders 

Research assistant

Franciscus Mulders is a Master student of philosophy and a Bachelor student of linguistics at Leiden Univerisity. As a philosopher, he specialises in Ancient Greek, political, and non-Western philosophy. As a linguist, he specialises in Indo-European languages. He is writing his BA thesis on Sandawe’s historical relations with the Cushitic languages.

Sophie Mulder

Research assistant

Sophie Mulder is student of Linguistics and Archaeology at Leiden University, planning to pursue her Master’s in Osteoarchaeology. Currently, she is writing her BA thesis on Southern Cushitic loans in the Bantu languages of the Taita Hills in East Africa.

Floor van

Doesburg

Research assistant

Floor van Doesburg is a third year BA archaeology student at Leiden University. He is specialising in East and South African archaeology. He is currently working on two thesis one on the connectivity of the Southern African subcontinent and the other on the oral traditions and ritual landscapes in Africa. In the project he will assist in understanding the archaeological record around the Rift Valley area.