Researcher

Gilles-Maurice de Schryver

Research disciplines
  • Humanities and the arts
    • African languages
    • Computational linguistics
    • Corpus linguistics
    • Lexicography
Expertise
Bantu Lexicography Bantu Corpus Linguistics Generative AI
Bio
• Dr Gilles-Maurice de Schryver is a research professor of African linguistics at BantUGent, the UGent Centre for Bantu Studies at Ghent University. He is also an extraordinary professor in the department of African languages at the University of Pretoria, a job title he formerly held at the University of the Western Cape (2006-2012). • He holds an MSc in microelectronic engineering (1995), as well as an MA (1999) and PhD (2005) in African languages and cultures. In 2002 he co-founded TshwaneDJe HLT to develop lexicographic software, and in 2006 he was a founding member of the African Language Technology group. • He is the author or co-author of close to 400 books, book chapters, journal articles and conference papers, mainly on Bantu corpus linguistics and lexicography in general. His publications also include award-winning dictionaries for Northern Sotho, Zulu and Xhosa, published with Oxford University Press, as well as various online dictionaries, amongst others the most popular one for Swahili. • He is a two-term past President of Afrilex (2009-2013), and a past President of Euralex (2018-2021). Earlier, he also served in other capacities on the executive boards of Afrilex (2001-2009), Euralex (2006-2014), Asialex (2007-2013) and Australex (2008-2013). Most recently, he has been co-facilitating the creation of Americalex-S (2021-2023), and is the current Chair of Globalex (2022-2024).