Ericka Albaugh: Research Summary

Overview

Ericka Albaugh’s research centers around language and Africa. Her first book, Statebuilding and Multilingual Education in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2014) explained various language-in-education policies in African states and focused on the cases of Cameroon, Ghana, and Senegal. She explored the continued influence of former colonizers, along with local actors, on shifting language policy outcomes across the continent. Her second book, an edited volume with historian Kathryn de Luna titled Tracing Language Movement in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2018), revealed the forces of fixity and fragmentation in languages across Africa and the diaspora. Her third book, States of Language Policy (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), is an edited volume with Linda Cardinal and Rémi Léger that provides a generalized framework for explaining language policy outcomes in different settings. She has written articles and chapters that touch on subjects such as war and language in Sierra Leone, the spread of the lingua franca of Dyula in Burkina Faso, and citizenship sentiments and education in Africa.

Current Work

Currently, she is working on two projects. The first is a book that considers the importance of cities, commerce, and conflict in spreading languages across Africa and that features the cases of Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Senegal. Second, she is writing an article and short story that reflect her recent research into artisanal gold mining in Burkina Faso. This began as an exploration of how gold mining sites serve to spread lingua francas, but it has developed into a more personal look at the social and economic impacts of mining on local communities.

Student Opportunities

She enjoys including students in her research. Students have helped her with historical research about types of polities in precolonial Africa, with digitizing maps of trade routes, with drawing subnational and language group boundaries, and with collecting and interpreting census and election data to project in ArcGIS, among other tasks.

Ericka Albaugh's Faculty Profile

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  Mapping Africa: Traditional Structures and Contemporary Outcomes

  Abby Gonneville ’21 is working with Associate Professor of Government Ericka Albaugh to provide mapping data to help answer a question about the lingering effects of precolonial governance systems in contemporary Africa.  
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  Technology Fellows Target Old Mongolian Maps, Tourette’s, and Teacher Mentorships

  Each summer, Bowdoin faculty are invited to apply for funding from the college’s Gibbons Summer Research Program to hire students to help them with technological research.
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  Gibbons Student Logan Jackonis ’17: Language and War in Africa

  Logan Jackonis ’17 received a Gibbons grant this summer to assist Associate Professor of Government Ericka Albaugh map language shifts in Sierra Leone as a result of its long civil war, which lasted from 1991 to 2002.