Team

Sara Pacchiarotti (°1982) is associate professor of linguistics at Ghent University. She obtained her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Oregon in 2017 under Fulbright sponsorship. She was a postdoctoral fellow in historical linguistics within the ERC-funded BantuFirst project (2018-2020) and then carried out FWO-funded post-doctoral research on morphosyntactic change in West-Coastal Bantu. In 2023, she was awarded an ERC Starting Grant for the CongUbangi project (2024-2029). Beyond Bantu, Sara has worked on Bribri (Chibchan, Costa Rica) and Mooré (Gur, Burkina Faso). She is particularly interested in historical comparative linguistics (phonology, morphology, syntax) and language change. She is the author of Bantu applicative constructions (2019, University of Chicago Press for CSLI) and co-editor of Applicative morphology: neglected syntactic and non-syntactic functions (2022, de Gruyter) and Reconstructing Proto-Bantu Grammar (2022, Language Science Press).  Publications

Peter Coutros (°1986) received his PhD in anthropology from Yale University in 2017. For his dissertation, he directed the DARE project, focused on the  reconstruction of the Late Stone Age/Early Iron Age socio-ecological landscape of the Diallowali site system in northern Senegal. He was previously a visiting assistant professor of archaeology at Wesleyan University, a postdoctoral fellow of archaeology at the University of Puget Sound. Most recently he was a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University within the ERC-funded BantuFirst project focused on socio-ecological change of the Kwilu-Kasai River network in DRC across the longue durée. He has particular interest in ceramic seriation, resilience, and the social impacts of climate change. In addition to Senegal and DRC, he has conducted archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research in Angola, Mali, Mauritania, Kenya, Madagascar, Peru, Guatemala, and Mongolia. Publications

Paulin Baraka Bose (°1989) is a PhD student in linguistics within the CongUbangi project. His PhD research consists of case studies of language contact and shift among Bantu, Ubangi and Central Sudanic language communities in the provinces of Nord Ubangi and Sud Ubangi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in computer networks and systems administration from Uganda’s Bugema University, in 2022, he earned a master’s degree in Culture and Environment in Africa from the University of Cologne. His master’s thesis, Gutsinda & Kwita: in-law name taboos and naming system among Banyabwisha, focused on the Bwisha group in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) bordering Rwanda and Uganda, especially their naming system and name taboos. He started his linguistic fieldwork in 2010 as an informant and has been actively involved in ethnographic research ever since due to his interest for African anthropological linguistics and pragmatics. He has written on Kivu Swahili, Youth Language Practices, and Lingala.

Chrisnah Renaudot Mfouhou (°1996) is a PhD student in linguistics within the CongUbangi project. His PhD dissertation focuses on the phonetics, phonology, morphology and syntax of Ndunga, an Ubangi (Mbaic) language spoken around Lisala in the Mongala province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He studied Bantu linguistics at Marien Ngouabi University where he obtained his Master degree in 2021. For his Master dissertation, he did his first fieldwork to describe the consonant system of one variety of Luumbu (Bantu B44) spoken in the Republic of Congo. He then joined the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) in 2021 where he worked for three years and half as a linguist whose main responsibilities included conducting fieldworks to write spelling and grammar guides, as well as dictionaries and lexicons of various Bantu languages (A80, B40,70, C20,30, 40, H10). During his time at SIL, Chrisnah has done linguistic fieldworks and participated in grammar-based workshops in the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya. Moreover, he acted as part time teacher at Marien Ngouabi University (2022-2024) in General Linguistics, Phonology, English Grammar and Intensive Oral Language.

Lucien Pierre Nguerede (°1969) is a PhD student in (ethno)archaeology within the CongUbangi project and an assistant in archaeology at the Centre Universitaire de Recherche et de Documentation en Histoire et Archéologie Centrafricaines (CURDHACA) at the University of Bangui in the Central African Republic. His undergraduate and MA research focused on the archaeological and ethnohistorical approach to traditional iron metallurgy in a Banda community in south-eastern Central Africa. From 2002 to present, he has focused on the analysis of artefacts from open-air sites on the right bank of the Ubangi river, as part of his efforts to understand the chronocultural sequences that have developed and succeeded one another in the Bangui area and its periphery. Since 2020, he has actively collaborated with archaeologists from Southern Methodist University (Texas, USA) on a research project which analyzes the cultural interaction between forager and farmer (Boffi of the Gbaya ethnic group) communities in the south-west of the Central African Republic. For his dissertation, he aims at researching cultural diversity through material productions such as iron metallurgy and the ways in which the producers/users of this tradition have adapted to the Congo Basin.

Henri Zana (°1966) is a PhD student in (ethno)archaeology within the CongUbangi project and an assistant in archaeology at the Centre Universitaire de Recherche et de Documentation en Histoire et Archéologie Centrafricaines (CURDHACA) at the University of Bangui in the Central African Republic (CAR). Born in a forested area of CAR, he began his primary, secondary and university education with great difficulty. While hunting, fishing, and gathering together with his grandparents as well as Pygmy and Bantu groups, he became immediately interested in stories, tales and legends relating to his origins. In 1987, he enrolled at the University of Bangui, where he obtained a BA and MA degrees in history with a specialization in archaeology. In 1999-2000, he joined the Ermes Laboratory of the Institut français de la Recherche et du Développement (IRD) at the Université d’Oréans in France, where he obtained a Diplôme d’étude approfondie (DEA) in Environnement : Temps Espaces et Sociétés (ETES). For this second MA degree he used ethnoarchaeology to understand the material cultures of the people in the forested area of south-west Cameroon (Kribi-Campo coastal zone). For his PhD dissertation, he aims at researching cultural diversity through material productions such as pottery, and the ways in which the producers/users of this tradition have adapted to the Congo Basin.

Jean-Pierre Donzo Bunza Yugia (°1963) is Professor of African Linguistics at the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de la Gombe (Kinshasa / DR Congo). He obtained his joint PhD in African languages and Cultures at Ghent University and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (2015). He taught Lingala at Ghent University (Lingala II, 2021). His research focuses mainly on the descriptive linguistics and historical-comparative linguistics of the Bantu and Ubangian languages  as well as the documentation of endangered languages, especially those of pygmies of the DR Congo. Since 2009, he also works on lexicography, terminology and literacy tools as member of the DR Congo team for RAMAA, a UNESCO project and an institute for lifelong learning. Publications

Igor Matonda Sakala (°1984) holds a joint PhD in African Languages and Cultures from Ghent University (UGent, 2017) and History, Art History and Archaeology from Brussels University (ULB, 2017), which he obtained as part of the KongoKing project. His PhD thesis focused on the the Inkisi Valley in the Era of the Kongo Kingdom and relied on historical, archaeological and linguistic data. Since 2018, he has been an Associate Professor at the University of Kinshasa (UNIKIN), more specifically at the Department of Historical Sciences. His teaching and research focus on African precolonial and colonial history, the early and more recent settlement and population history of the Congo, demographic history, historical archaeology, and ceramic traditions. Publications