About us
Our editors
Based in Germany, a team of Swahili scholars from Europe and Eastern Africa is working together in editing and publishing Swahili Forum. The editors are supported by an exquisite editorial board which consists of Swahili scholars and intellectuals of international renown.
Instittue of African Studies, Leipzig University Berlin, Germany.
- Lecturer in Swahili Language, Swahili Studies, Urban Africa, Language and the un/mkaing of borders, etc.
- Editor of Swahili Forum 2012 (between 2017 and 2022, only in the function of Editorial Advisor and Technical Editor).
Coming from a background in Swahili literature, I have worked and published on Swahili cultural performance, literature, digital publics, Urban Studies. Working on urban materialities, inspired by Indigenous Studies, Swahili (and other African) onto-epistemologies, Agential Realism and New Materialism, I am now engaging with the potentialities of words as matter (words as worlds = wor(l)ds). Continuously committed to a more just science, I take wor(l)ds as entry points into the multiple (non Euro-[phone]-centric) ways of conceptings that help un/write the humanities.
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Department of African Studies, Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University Berlin, Germany.
- Lecturer in Swahili Language and Literature
- Editor of Swahili Forum since 2000
Research interests in contemporary Swahili literature, comparative East African literature, Swahili terminology, and East African colonial and post-colonial history.
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Department of "Asia, African and Mediterranean", University of Naples "L'Orientale", Italy.
Department "Literaturen in Afrikanischen Sprachen" (BIGSAS associated), University of Bayreuth, Germany.
- PhD student.
- Editor of Swahili Forum since 2015.
Research Interests: East-African Literatures, Comparative Literature, Theories and practices of Translation, Aesthetics of Literature, Hermeneutics, Philosophy.
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Department of Kiswahili, Institute of African Studies, Kenyatta University, Kenya
- Lecturer in Kiswahili Literature since 1987
- Editor for Swahili Forum since 2015
Research interests in: political discourse, Kiswahili literature (gender issues, oral literature, translated Kiswahili, novel and play, children's literature, Sheng, contemporary Kiswahili, literature and curriculum development and implementation in Kiswahili and African Languages.
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Asien-Afrika-Institut, Hamburg University, Germany
- Lecturer of Swahili
- Editor of Swahili Forum since 2003.
Research Interests: Swahili language and literature, Swahili popular culture (literature and music), African orature, youth language in Tansania, teaching of Swahili as a foreign language.
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Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies (BIGSAS), University of Bayreuth, Germany.
- Research Fellow.
- Lecturer for Swahili Language since 2015.
- Editor of Swahili Forum since 2015.
Research Interests: Swahili Language and Literature, Translation History, Postcolonial Translation Theories, Sociology of Translation, Cognitive Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics.
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Afrikanistik I, Bayreuth University, Germany.
- Professor of African Languages.
- Editor of Swahili Forum since 2005.
Research Interests in pragmatic and poetic aspects of African languages as well as historical perspectives of language contact and change in Eastern Africa and lusophone Africa.
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Department of African Studies, University of Vienna, Austria
- Senior Lecturer Swahili
- Post doc researcher
- Editor of Swahili Forum since 2017
Research Interests: Non-Standard Varieties of Swahili, Swahili and Societies, Swahili Second Language Acquisition and Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, Plurilingualism/ transnational language use, Language and power, Language and history, Employment-tied housing in (post)-colonial Africa: Lubumbashi (DR Congo)
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Editorial Board
The Editorial Board of Swahili Forum provides advice about the content and the policy of the journal as and when needed, and comprises esteemed professionals from all major fields within the Swahili Studies to guarantee representation across all fields.
- Abdilatif Abdalla (University of Leipzig, Germany)
- Sauda Ali Barwani (University of Hamburg, Germany)
- Rose Marie Beck (University of Leipzig, Germany)
- Pat Caplan (Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)
- Nelli Gromova (Moscow State University, Russia)
- Thomas Hinnebusch (University of California, USA)
- Mark Horton (University of Bristol, UK)
- Arvi Hurskainen (University of Helsinki, Finland)
- Said Ahmed Mohamed Khamis (University of Bayreuth, Germany)
- Geoffrey Kitula King’ei (Kenyatta University, Kenya)
- Kjersti Larsen (University of Oslo, Norway)
- Françoise Le Guennec-Coppens (CNRS-LACITO, Paris, France)
- Gudrun Miehe (University of Bayreuth, Germany)
- Wilhelm J. G. Möhlig (University of Cologne, Germany)
- Georges Mulumbwa (University of Lubumbashi, DR Congo)
- Aldin K. Mutembei (University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)
- David Parkin (University of Oxford, UK)
- Ridder Samsom (University of Hamburg, Germany)
- Peter Seitel (Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Washington D.C., USA)
- Thilo Schadeberg (Leiden University, Netherlands)
- Walter Schicho (University of Vienna, Austria)
- Farouk Topan (The Aga Khan University, London, UK)
- Saida Yahya-Othman (University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)
Editorial Advisor and Technical Editor: Irene Brunotti.