Koen Bostoen (°1975) studied African Languages and Cultures at Ghent University (Cand.-Lic., 1994-1997) and Anthropology (D.E.C., 1997-1998) and African Linguistics (D.E.A., 1997-1999) at Brussels Free University (ULB). In 2004, he obtained a PhD in Linguistics at the ULB under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Claire Grégoire and with a PhD dissertation titled Etude comparative et historique du vocabulaire relatif à la poterie en bantou. From 2004 to 2011, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Linguistics Department of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, where he helped to revive the journal Africana Linguistica and co-founded the Tervuren Series for African Language Documentation and Description. From 2005 to 2011, he was a lecturer in African historical linguistics and African oral literature at ULB. Between 2005 and 2010, he was part-time visiting professor in the field of African Linguistics at Ghent University. Since 2011, he has been a full-time professor of Swahili and African Linguistics at Ghent University (2012-2016: assistant professor, 2016-2018: associate professor, since 2018: full professor).
Koen Bostoen's research focuses on the study of Bantu languages and 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 (2018-2022). On top of being the (co-)author of numerous research articles, he is author of Des mots et des pots en bantou: une approche linguistique de l'histoire de la céramique en Afrique (2005, Peter Lang) and co-editor of Studies in African comparative linguistics, with special focus on Bantu and Mande (2005, RMCA), The Kongo Kingdom: Origins, Dynamics and Cosmopolitan Culture of an African Polity (2018, Cambridge University Press), Une archéologie des provinces septentrionales du royaume Kongo (2018, Archaeopress) and The Bantu Languages, 2nd edition (2019, Taylor and Francis).
Key publications
Bostoen, K. (2007). Pots, Words and the Bantu Problem: On Lexical Reconstruction and Early African History. Journal of African History 48: 173-199.
Bostoen, K., & C. Grégoire. (2007). La question bantoue: bilan et perspectives. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris - Nouvelle Série 15: 73-91.
Bostoen, K., (2008). Bantu Spirantization: Morphologization, Lexicalization and Historical Classification. Diachronica 25: 299-356.
Pakendorf, B., Bostoen, K., & C. de Filippo. (2011). Molecular Perspectives on the Bantu Expansion: A Synthesis. Language Dynamics and Change 1: 50-88.
Bostoen, K., Dom, S., & G. Segerer. (2015). The Antipassive in Bantu. Linguistics 53: 731-772.
Bostoen, K., Clist, B., Doumenge, C., Grollemund, R., Hombert, J.-M., Koni Muluwa, J., & Maley, J. (2015). Middle to Late Holocene Paleoclimatic Change and the Early Bantu Expansion in the Rain Forests of West Central-Africa. Current Anthropology 56: 354-384.
Bostoen, K., & Bastin, Y. (2016). Bantu Lexical Reconstruction. In Oxford Handbooks Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bostoen, K. (2018). The Bantu Expansion. In T. Spear (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Oxford Research Encyclopedias Online.
Bostoen, K. (2019). Reconstructing Proto-Bantu. In Van de Velde, M., Bostoen, K., Nurse, D., & Philippson, G. (Eds.), The Bantu Languages (Second Edition), 308-334. Oxford: Routledge.
Schadeberg, T., & Bostoen, K. (2019). Word Formation. In Van de Velde, M., Bostoen, K., Nurse, D., & Philippson, G. (Eds.), The Bantu Languages (Second Edition), 172-203. New York: Routledge.
Pacchiarotti, S., Chousou-Polydouri, N., & Bostoen, K. (2019). Untangling the West-Coastal Bantu Mess: Identification, Geography and Phylogeny of the Bantu B50-80 Languages. Africana Linguistica 25: 155-229.
Bostoen, K. (2020). The Bantu Expansion: Some Facts and Fiction. In Crevels, M., & Muysken, P. (Eds.), Language Dispersal, Diversification, and Contact, 227-239. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bostoen, K. (2020). Language and Archaeology. In Vossen, R., & Dimmendaal, G.J. (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of African Languages, 972-982. Oxford: Oxford University Press.