This week’s episode is with Alice Mitchell, a Junior Professor at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Cologne in Germany. Alice holds a bachelor’s degree in German and Linguistics from the University of Oxford, an MA in Language Documentation and Description from SOAS, and a PhD in Linguistics from the University at Buffalo. Prior to starting her current position in Cologne, Alice spent one year as a Humboldt Fellow in the African Studies department at the University of Hamburg, and three years as a postdoc in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the Datooga language of Tanzania, where she has been conducting fieldwork since 2012.
In this episode, Alice talks us through her research in Tanzania, and her experiences documenting name avoidance and studying children’s speech in Datooga.
Things mentioned in this episode:
- Ep 16: Remote Fieldwork with Richard T. Griscom
- Guernésiais language
- Datooga language
- Nilotic language family
- An Introduction to African Languages by Tucker Childs
- avoidance registers
- Røde NTG-2 microphone
- Zoom H4N audio recorder
- Zoom Q8 video recorder
- ME 62 Sennheiser omnidirectional microphone
- Voltaic Systems solar panel
- Varikin Project
- On communicative competence. . .in the field by Leslie C. Moore
Listen here, or on your favorite podcast app! Field Notes is available on Apple Podcasts app (iPhone), Google Play Music (Android), Google Podcasts app (Android), Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast Republic, Castbox, Player FM, and several other apps via RSS.
Field Notes 