Acronym
BantUGent
Duration
01 January 2016 → Ongoing
Faculties
Group leader
Research disciplines
-
Humanities and the arts
- Material culture studies
- African history
- African languages
Keywords
Archaeology
Art
History
Language technology
Linguistics
15th Century
16th Century
17th Century
18th Century
19th Century
20th Century
Contemporary
African languages
Africa
Comparative
Field research
Geographic and map based
Iconography and analysis of images
Language and text analysis
Quantitative
Surveys
Bantu linguistics
Historical linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Corpus linguistics
Lexicography
Dialectology
Language technology
Language documentation and description
Transdisciplinary studies
Material culture studies
Art history
Historical anthropology
Economic anthropology
Description
A transdisciplinary approach to the past and present of Bantu languages, Bantu speech communities and their (im)material worlds, both in Africa and in the diaspora. The research starts from the data-driven study of language and/or material culture and is combined — whenever and wherever possible or needed — with methods and theoretical insights from (historical) linguistics, archaeology, (historical) anthropology, art history, (ethno)history, ethnobotany, ethnozoology, genetics, etc.
This research group aims to continue and to broaden the work undertaken within the ERC-funded KongoKing (2012-2016) and BantuFirst (2018-2023) projects, the BELSPO-funded CongoConnect (2015-2019) project, as well as associated projects within the field of Bantu Studies, and formalises the de facto research culture of about two dozen researchers who work together towards similar goals.