Una Europa project update: Enhancing Scholarship in Eastern Africa (ELSEA)
In September, the Una Europa ELSEA project, Enhancing Scholarship in Eastern Africa, officially started. Now that the project has been running for a couple of months, it’s high time to check in and see how the project is going.
In September, Jenneke van der Wal, together with colleagues from Makerere University, Univeristy of Helsinki, and University of Edinburgh, received funding from the Una Europa-Africa Partnership for the ELSEA project; Enhancing Scholarship in Eastern Africa. We interviewed project coordinator and assistant professor Jenneke van der Wal (LUCL) and Allen Asiimwe, senior lecturer at the department of African Languages at Makerere University in Uganda.
Tell us a bit about how this project came about.
Jenneke: 'Leiden University joined the Una Europa alliance in 2023, and when I read about the Una Europa-Africa Partnership, I contacted my colleagues at Makerere University and told them about this opportunity. I asked them what their thoughts were and they indicated that some type of training in the field of descriptive linguistics would be useful.'
Allen: 'I did not know about Una Europa before. I learned about it through Jenneke, the project coordinator. When she saw the call from the Una Europa-Africa Partnership seed fund, she contacted me and Saudah Namyalo (the Chairholder from Makerere University), asking us if we could submit a proposal together.'
ELSEA stands for ‘Enhancing Scholarship in Eastern Africa’. Why is this so important?
Jenneke: 'Language description is vital; it informs school materials and books, enhances understanding of cultural heritage and history, and determines the typology of language structures. However, local experts often lack the necessary training to tackle this vast task. The ELSEA project aims to bridge this gap by offering an online course and a field school to early-career linguists in East Africa.'
The project runs until August 2025. What are your upcoming plans and activities?
Allen: 'I am currently here in Leiden, filming our lectures for the online linguistics course for early-career linguists in eastern Africa, which runs from February to May.
In this course, we shall cover the basics of descriptive linguistics. The online participants are expected to pick a specific grammar that they shall use during the training. We hope to draw data from all the three language families spoken in the region, namely, Cushitic, Nilotic, and Bantu. The ultimate goal is to enhance the participants’ knowledge and skills in linguistic data collection and analysis so that they are able to set up their own descriptive research projects.'
Jenneke: 'In the online course, the participants go through the basics of descriptive linguistics: phonology, morphology, syntax, and some guidance on how to set up a linguistics project. The course will be online, with a digital learning environment in which participants can find explanatory videos and lectures, reading materials, and exercises to familiarise themselves with the contents.
The online course will be followed by a field school at Makarere University in Kampala, Uganda, from the 26th of July to the 9th of August. The field school will give participants a chance to carry out their own project and get hands-on experience for example in using audio- and video recorders and managing linguistic data in a digital database.'
What do you hope to achieve with this project?
Allen: 'The project will enhance my knowledge of preparing and delivering online lectures, for example, on how to make the online learning environment more interactive. I also look forward to more collaborative relationships with members of the ELSEA research team, and members of other projects under the Una Europa-African Partnership. As I become more grounded in descriptive linguistics, I will also be able to mentor other researchers at my own university.'
Jenneke: 'The fact that the materials created for the course will be reusable and available should have an impact on the quality of linguistic scholarship in eastern Africa. I am looking forward to many more high-quality descriptions of African languages!'