Dr Sophie Salffner awarded £20,000

Dr Sophie Salffner, a recent graduate from the PhD in Field Linguistics, has been granted a £20,000 award by the British Council together with Dr Imelda Udoh (University of Uyo, Nigeria) and Dr Francis Oyebade (Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba, Nigeria). The funding was awarded under the PMI2 Connect and Collaborative Programme Delivery Funding to review and develop the teaching of Language Documentation and Description at SOAS, the University of Uyo and Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba and to further the development of Language Documentation and Description as a framework and field of research.

The University of Uyo teaches an MA in Computational Language Documentation, which will be reviewed, evaluated and developed based on the outcome of the evaluation and in light of new developments in Language Documentation and Description and the renewed interest in anthropological linguistics and interdisciplinary aspects. In addition, the project aims to develop an optional module on Language Documentation and Description for the MA Linguistics at Akungba University. For all three universities, the project members will develop a module on Anthropological Linguistics and the Ethnography of Speech. The project also hopes to feed experience from doing Language Documentation and Description in the West African context into the field of research so that this region is better represented in the discipline. As part of the project, two members of staff from each Nigerian partner university will visit SOAS for a month and Sophie Salffner will take part in a joint workshop in Nigeria.