SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Multilingualism and Writing Systems in Cameroon: From King Njoya’s Shumum to the General Alphabet of Cameroonian Languages

About the speaker

Dr. Seraphin Kamdem, PhD (SOAS, London) studied at the University of Yaounde, Cameroon; University of East Anglia, Norwich, England; University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, USA; and the SOAS, University of London, UK.
He holds a PhD from SOAS. His doctoral thesis focused on African languages and education, investigating multilingual adult literacy in the rural areas of Cameroon, in Africa. His initial research into adult literacy as a psycholinguistic skill and an educational activity has expanded into investigating issues of social status and identities of adult learners, grassroots agency and institutional development, local ownership and community response, all mediated through literacy as an endogenous and community-based enterprise.

Dr Kamdem is currently a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Languages and Cultures of Africa at SOAS, University of London.

His research interests are in the following areas: Sociolinguistics, African languages and cultures, Applied Linguistics, Grassfields Bantu languages, Ghomálá’ (Grassfields Bantu), Bilingualism and Multilingualism, Language pedagogy, Adult literacy in African languages, Production of didactic materials in African languages, Education in Africa