Episode 106: My Conversation with Pius Akumbu - MING Disappearing Worlds Series

Pius Akumbu is a senior researcher at Langage, Langues et Cultures d’Afrique (LLACAN), a research unit of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and INaLCO University that specializes in the study of the languages and cultures of Africa. Before joining LLACAN, Pius was a Visiting Professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Previously, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the University of Hamburg from 2019 to 2021. Before leaving Cameroon, Pius taught Linguistics courses at the universities of Buea and Bamenda. He received his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Yaoundé 1 in Cameroon. His research focuses on the documentation and description of Grassfields Bantu languages of Cameroon, including his mother tongue, Babanki. Additionally, Pius researches multilingualism in Cameroon as well as language planning and policy in Africa. He is an ELDP grant recipient, and a depositor at the Endangered Languages Archive. Since November 2022, Pius has been one of the Endangered Languages Project’s (ELP) language revitalization mentors.