Thomas Summers

Thomas Summers holds a BA (Hons) in Modern Languages (French, Spanish & Chinese) from Lancaster University and an MA in Comparative Literature from SOAS University of London. His Master’s dissertation examined the impact of Swahili language instruction on Tanzanian students’ academic performance, exploring how linguistic policy and pedagogy influence educational outcomes.  

He is currently completing a PhD in African Languages at SOAS, where his research investigates linguistic innovation and digital communication in Swahili Twitter discourse across East Africa. Drawing on a corpus of over 10,000 tweets, his work combines methods from corpus linguistics, digital ethnography, and sociolinguistics to examine how users manipulate Swahili phonology, morphology, and orthography to express identity, humour, and belonging in online spaces. His research also explores questions of standardisation, language policy, and the evolution of East African digital vernaculars.  

Thomas’s broader academic interests include African sociolinguistics, digital humanities, Swahili literature, postcolonial studies, and the politics of language in education and governance. He has presented at numerous symposia and conferences, including the SOAS Baraza Conference and the CAAS Conference at Columbia University, where he discussed the role of literature in bearing witness to trauma and memory in post-genocide Rwanda and Burundi.  He has been published in the SOAS Working Papers with an article on his current PhD thesis titled "Vowel Elision in Swahili Tweets: Linguistic Innovation in Digital Discourse", as well as in the proceedings of the CAAS conference in an article titled "Literature as Witness: Exploring Genocide in Rwanda and Burundi through the Works of Gaël Faye, Scholastique Mukasonga, Clemantine Wamariya and Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse".  

His research interests include: African languages in digital spaces, Swahili language and culture, Tanzanian minority languages and the wider East African community.  Alongside his academic career, Thomas works as a civil servant in the UK Cabinet Office, specialising in science and emerging technology policy, as well as investment security.

SOAS Working Papers, Volume 23, "Vowel Elision in Swahili Tweets: Linguistic Innovation in Digital Discourse". 

Proceedings from the 14th Annual Symposium of the Consortium for Asian and African Studies (CAAS), "Literature as Witness: Exploring Genocide in Rwanda and Burundi through the Works of Gaël Faye, Scholastique Mukasonga, Clemantine Wamariya and Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse"

• African languages in digital spaces
• Swahili language and culture
• Tanzanian minority languages
• The wider East African community