Roland Kiessling


Roland Kiessling is a German linguist and Africanist. Kiessling's research interests include language documentation, phonetics, historical linguistics, Cushitic languages, Nilotic languages, Niger-Congo languages, and !Xoon.

Biography

Kiessling studied African Studies and Phonetics at the University of Hamburg, where he obtained a PhD in 1993 and Habilitation in 2000. From 1990 to 1993, he was a research associate in a DFG project led by Ludwig Gerhardt, where he worked on Iraqw texts. Afterwards, he was a research assistant from 1993 to 1999 at the Institute for African Studies and Ethiopian Studies at the University of Hamburg.
Kiessling received the Kurt Hartwig Siemers Prize from the Hamburg Scientific Foundation in 1995. From 2001 to 2006, he was a DFG Heisenberg fellow.
Since 1 October 2006 he has been Professor of African studies at the University of Hamburg.

Selected publications

Eine Grammatik des Burunge. Research-and-Progress-Verlag, Hamburg 1994, .
  • editor, with Paul Berger: Iraqw texts. Köppe, Köln 1998,.
  • with Maarten Mous and Martha Qorro: Iraqw-English dictionary. With an English and a thesaurus index texts. Köppe, Köln 2002,.
  • editor, with Theda Schumann, Mechthild Reh and Ludwig Gerhardt: Aktuelle Forschungen zu afrikanischen Sprachen. Sprachwissenschaftliche Beiträge zum 14. Afrikanistentag, Hamburg, 11. – 14. Oktober 2000. Köppe, Köln 2002,.Die Rekonstruktion der südkuschitischen Sprachen. Von den systemlinguistischen Manifestationen zum gesellschaftlichen Rahmen des Sprachwandels. Köppe, Köln 2002, .
  • with Maarten Mous: The lexical reconstruction of West-Rift Southern Cushitic. Köppe, Köln 2003,.Verbal serialisation in Isu. A Grassfields language of Cameroon. Köppe, Köln 2011,.