Are you an Early Career linguist working in eastern Africa? Then this course is for you! Many of the eastern African languages are in need of (further) description, and who better to do that than local linguists? To boost your descriptive linguistics skills, you now have the opportunity to participate in this online course.

See the full description in this pdf:
https://jennekevanderwal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/online-course-eastern-african-linguistics.pdf

Enhancing Linguistic Scholarship in Eastern Africa (ELSEA)
Of the approximately 7000 languages that are used in the world today, one third are endangered, and only about half have a proper description. Describing languages is important because it forms the foundation for school materials and books, for understanding cultural heritage and history, and to determine the typology of language structures. There is thus a large and urgent task, requiring good linguistic skills. The ELSEA project, funded by UNA Europa, aims to enhance these skills through an online course and a field school.

In the online course, we cover the basics of descriptive linguistics with a focus on the languages of Eastern Africa, from phonetics to morphosyntax, so you can hear and transcribe tone, analyse morphosyntactic data of Cushitic, Nilotic and Bantu languages, and set up your own research project. There will be seven fortnightly online interactive seminars, as well as self study in the form of video lectures, exercises, and reading assignments to get you on top of the material. The course runs from February-May 2025 (see preliminary schedule below).

The most successful participants will be invited to attend the summer field school, which is organised at Makerere University in July 2025, to gain hands-on experience in linguistic data collection and analyses (recording for documentation, digital data management, project organisation, etc.).
The course is estimated to take 60 hours in total (including 14 hours of seminars, and therefore roughly 3-3.5 hours of self study per week). There will be a multiple choice exam at the end of the course.

Eligibility
All Early Career Researchers in linguistics in Eastern Africa are welcome, i.e. PhD students and those <5 years after finishing their PhD.
Points of attention:
• The course will be in English, so a decent level of competence is required to make the most of the course.
• As the course is online, a good internet connection is important – if you need support for wifi, you can indicate this in the form.
• You are expected to participate for the whole course and will be awarded a certificate upon successful completion.
• The most successful participants will be invited to attend the fully funded summer field school in Kampala.

How to apply
Submit the following documents through this form by 15 December 2024: https://fd24.formdesk.com/universiteitleiden/form692714801
• your motivation for participation (max 250 words);
• the topics you are working on/areas of interest (max 250 words);
• a short CV with previous experience (qualifications, project participation, publications; max 1 A4).
Notification of acceptance will be given around the 10th of January 2025.

Organisers/instructors
Lotta Aunio (Helsinki University), Bert Remijsen (Edinburgh University), Allen Asiimwe (Makerere University), Saudah Namyalo (Makerere University), Jenneke van der Wal (Leiden University), with assistance by Håvard Weiberg-Johansen (Leiden University).

For any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected].

This course is made possible through a UNA Europa Africa Partnership Seed Fund – see https://www.una-europa.eu/ for general information, and the factsheet for information on the ELSEA project.

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics

Language Family(ies): Cushitic
Narrow Bantu
Nilotic