Since 2017
Research fellow. University of Cologne. Institute for African Studies and Egyptology.

2018
Habilitation / Postdoctorate. University of Cologne. Thesis: ”Cherang’any. A Kalenjin Language of Kenya“.

2014 – 2016
Research fellow at the German Research Foundation research project: Die Sprache der Cherang’any. Gelebte Sprache, Kultur und Sprachkontakt in einem kolonialen Konstrukt (DFG).

2011 – 2014
Research fellow at the German Research Foundation research project: Die Marakwet-Sprachen (Süd-Nilotisch): Deskription und Vergleich (DFG).

2009
PhD, University of Cologne. Thesis: “Räumliche Orientierung in nilotischen Sprachen: Raumkonzepte – Direktionalität – Perspektiven“.

2006 – 2008
Research fellow at the German Research Foundation research project: Flussläufe als Korridore der Transmission typologischer Merkmale in den Sprachen Zentral-Westafrikas und Ostafrikas (DFG). University of Cologne, Prof. Dr. Anne Storch.

2002 –2004
Research fellow at the German Research Foundation research project: Vergleichende Untersuchungen zur diachronen Stratifizierung des Sprachkontakts in der Sahel- und Sudanzone. Das Wortgut und seine räumliche Verteilung innerhalb des Mande, Tschadischen, Kuschitischen, Omotischen und Nilotischen (DFG). University of Frankfurt, Prof. Dr. Rainer Vossen.

1997 – 1998
Research fellow at the University of Bayreuth; Prof. Dr. Franz Rottland.

• Nilotic Languages (Nilo-Saharan)
• Language in Tourism
• Language as social practice
• Anthropological Linguistics
• Philanthropic Tourism in Africa
• Kenya

The Grammar of a Space examines the Digo (Mijikenda) community from a particular angle: it investigates whether the community can be described like a language in a grammar. This metaphorical approach sees people and their actions as fundamental parts of a grammar: nouns that each have a name, an identity and a role in the community. Daily activities and actions, such as farming, crafting, cooking and teaching, function as verbs that keep the community moving. Character traits and characteristics of community members are seen as adjectives that emphasise individual contributions to the village community. Prepositions reflect the relationships and connections within the community, similar to the links in language. In addition, there are valency changing factors such as the influence of NGOs, coloniality and religion, which have a strengthening or weakening effect on the community. Silent communication through ancestors, spirits and envy, or emotions expressed through colours and symbolic words on kangas, as well as a vocabulary of contingency that responds to specific conditions, are further aspects of this analogy.

This project analyses narratives of women working in the extremely diverse tourism sectors of "philanthropic tourism" and "sex tourism".

Women who have found work in a social project in Tiwi, Kenya, are accompanied in their stories about their past, which usually stylises the founder of the project as a rescuer. Furthermore, songs that the women of this project recite during visits of tourists and also include the founder as an omnipresent savior are analysed in a discourse analysis.

On the other hand, Kenyan women who pursue prostitution on the touristic coast of Kenya tell their stories. Often incomprehensible stories suggest that the articulation of the traumatic heritage and transgression allows dealing with one's own history.

The narratives of both areas are part of a genre that is necessary to engage others, in this case, tourists, and get financial support. Power relationships dominate the meetings between the narrators and the listeners, which are continuously produced due to a dependency on both sides. The women venture the step out of invisibility into the visibility of precariousness, which can obviously be seen as a personal overcoming and which needs a variable that makes the tales easier: a saint or a sinner.

Researcher: PD Dr. Angelika Mietzner, Bonciana Lisanza (Eldoret)

Language that is out of place, not spoken “properly”, a conversation on the impossible, the unspeakable and the unheard of: what is language really when it is not under control, torn and broken?

This project is about language that differs from normative representations, not (only) as a deliberate subversive performance (but also this), but also as a construction of perceived inadequacy and as agentive speech that does the wrong kind of things. Swearing and cursing, yelling, mocking, shouting and crying are in the focus of the project.

It looks at language at places that are not so often investigated by linguists, such as beaches, where language leads a life apart, liminal and strange.

Researcher: Prof. Dr. Anne Storch, PD Dr. Angelika Mietzner, Prof. Dr. Nico Nassenstein (Mainz)

Die Afrikanistik ist, wie vergleichbare andere Disziplinen auch, ein koloniales Fach: Gegründet während der kolonialen Expansion Europas, über eine lange Zeit Diskurshoheit zu „Afrika“ einfordernd, sich erst allmählich kritischer Selbstreflexion stellend, und institutionell genordet. 

Dieses Projekt setzt sich einerseits mit kritischer Wissenschaftsgeschichte und koloniallinguistischen Fragen auseinander, andererseits mit der eigenen Positionalität, neuen Möglichkeiten der wissenschaftlichen Konversation und Dissemination. 

Es trägt zur Gestaltung von Workshops, Residencies, Tagungen und Gesprächsverabredungen bei, unterstützt die Entwicklung neuer Publikationsformen (z.B. The Mouth) sowie der selbstkritischen Betrachtung des materiellen Umfelds afrikanistischer Forschung und Lehre.

Researcher: PD Dr. Angelika Mietzner, Prof. Dr. Nico Nassenstein (Mainz), Prof. Dr. Axel Fanego Palat (Frankfurt), Prof. Dr. Anne Storch,

Tourism, as one of the most ubiquitous and powerful contexts of mobility and cross-linguistic interaction, is a complex context in which historically rooted entanglements (linguistically, ideologically, economically) are played out by the different participants.

A sociolinguistics of tourism increasingly needs to turn the gaze to the contexts in which power inequalities, resistance and subversion, social injustice and struggle critically define interactions. In such contexts, language may not so much be seen as monolithic structure or multilingual wealth and diversity, but as a possibility painted by ideologies and objectifications, as well as living, messy practice that facilitates quick encounters.

This project is about language in tourism: its mobilities, dynamics, ideologies and consumptions.

Researcher: PD Dr. Angelika Mietzner, Prof. Dr. Anne Storch, Prof. Dr. Nico Nassenstein (Mainz)