Meet the People
Hello and Welcome!
I am Jonna Katto, an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki and PI of this project.
In my research, I take an interdisciplinary approach to the study of gender in African pasts that builds on my many years’ experience working at the intersection of oral history, gender studies, and cultural history. Since 2012, I have been conducting research among the Yaawo-speaking communities in northern Mozambique.
I am author of Women’s Lived Landscapes of War and Liberation in Mozambique: Bodily Memory and the Gendered Aesthetics of Belonging (Routledge, 2019). I have also written on emotions in history-telling and the sensory aesthetics of food memories. More recently, I have focused on the deeper gendered histories of power, which has involved combining research in oral history and oral traditions.
My current research project seeks to go even deeper into the past by combining oral history (including oral traditions) with the study of word histories. This involves new and exciting collaborations with experts in African linguistics (especially the Yaawo language) and experts in the historical-comparative study of Bantu languages.
Overall, I am interested in exploring new methodological routes in the research and writing of African gender histories over the long timespan.
DR JONNA KATTO
Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki | Marie Skłodowska-Curie alumni (Individual Fellowship, Ghent University) | Editor-in-Chief of the Nordic Journal of African Studies.
See publications here.
Meet the Research Collaborators
Domingos Aly
Yaawo Language Expert
Domingos Aly is from N’kalapa, Mavago district in Niassa, Mozambique. He is a teacher by profession and, since 1991, he has worked at the Paulo Samuel Kankhomba and Cristiano Paulo Taimo Secondary Schools in Lichinga. From the year 2000, he has collaborated in the Bilingual Program in the production of teaching manuals. His training on the standardisation of writing in Ciyaawo was guided by Professor Armindo S. A. Ngunga. Domingos Aly is co-author of the alphabetisation books Naciloongola, for 3rd Class reading, and Dilaanguka. He has also participated in the translation and adaptation of mathematics and natural science manuals, as well as teachers’ manuals.
Paolo Israel
Associate Professor of History,
University of the Western Cape
Paolo Israel is an anthropologist and historian, currently associate professor at the University of Western Cape. He is author of In Step with the Times: Mapiko Masquerades of Mozambique (Ohio University Press, 2014). At present he is working on a nonfiction book titled The Magical Lions of Muidumbe, in which he blends interviews, life stories, descriptions of dance and anecdotes to provide a panoramic view of a witch-hunt and also society in Muidumbe (in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique), where it occurred.
Julius Taji
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics,
University of Dar es Salaam
Julius Taji is a senior lecturer in the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics, University of Dar es Salaam, and a research associate at the University of the Free State, South Africa. His areas of interest include morphosyntactic structures of Bantu languages, lexicography, and sign language linguistics. Julius has worked extensively on Chiyaawo in Tanzania. His current research focuses on linguistic and sociocultural aspects of plant names among the Yaawo, the formation of these names, and how this naming is intertwined with indigenous knowledge systems. He has also published a Yao-English-Swahili Dictionary (Languages of Tanzania Project, 2017).
Koen Bostoen
Professor of African Linguistics and Swahili, Ghent University
Koen Bostoen’s research focuses on the historical-comparative study of Bantu languages and on interdisciplinary approaches to the African past. He obtained an ERC Starting Grant for the KongoKing project (2012-2016) and an ERC Consolidator’s Grant for the BantuFirst project (2018-2023). Apart from several (co-authored) articles and book chapters in the fields of African (historical) linguistics, archaeology and genetics, he is the author of Des mots et des pots en bantou: une approche linguistique de l’histoire de la céramique en Afrique (Peter Lang, 2005) and co-editor of a number of books, including The Kongo Kingdom: Origins, Dynamics and Cosmopolitan Culture of an African Polity (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and On Reconstructing Proto-Bantu Grammar (Language Science Press, 2022).
Ahmmardouh Mjaya
Senior Lecturer in African Languages and Linguistics, University of Malawi
Ahmmardouh Mjaya is a lecturer in African Languages and Linguistics and a Ciyaawo language specialist at Chancellor College, University of Malawi. His main expertise and research interests lie in language and literacy. Ahmmardouh is author of Literacies, Power and Identities in Figured Worlds in Malawi (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). Previously, he was a PI for a UKRI – GRTA-funded multinational Family Literacy, Indigenous and Intergenerational Learning project coordinated by the University of East Anglia (UK) from 2019 to 2022.
Tobias Houston
Translation Studies Scholar and Research Fellow at the University of the Free State
Tobias Houston has lived in Lichinga, Niassa Province, Mozambique since 2011 and is currently a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, South Africa and Project Coordinator of PROMOTYPAD (Projecto Moçambicano de Tradução Yaawo da Palavra de Deus) in Lichinga. His main areas of expertise and interest are in translation studies (notably oral translation), theology, history (especially early Ciyaawo texts), and sociolinguistics. Tobias’ recent publications include “A Sociolinguistic and Extensibility Survey of Ciyawo Language Communities in Mozambique’s Niassa Province” (2023), Journal of Language Survey Reports, SIL International and “Utenga Wambone — the ‘Good News’: An Exploration of Historical Ciyawo Bible Translations and Linguistic Texts”, Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae (2022), 48(3):1-18.