Dr Teresa Poeta

Biography

Teresa is a Postdoctoral Researcher working on the Leverhulme Trust funded project ‘Grammatical variation in Swahili: contact, change and identity’ - a collaboration between University of Essex, Kenyatta University, SOAS and the University of Dar es Salaam. Teresa’s research focuses on Bantu languages with a special interest in Swahili and more generally on issues of language diversity and multilingualism. Before joining the University of Essex, Teresa taught Swahili undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the University of Edinburgh and curated an Africa book collection for the Fondazione Basso library in Rome. For her PhD Teresa worked on the morphosyntax-discourse interface of Swahili and Makhuwa examining the way speakers refer to participants in different types of narratives. Teresa has been studying, researching and working with the Swahili language throughout her academic path focusing on topics such as Swahili proverbs and idioms or the use of applicatives in spoken and written Swahili. During her time at SOAS Teresa co-founded and acted as Outreach Programme Coordinator (until 2017) of languagelandscape.org; a project that aims at raising awareness of language diversity and promoting the value of multilingualism.

Qualifications

• PhD Linguistics School of Oriental and African Studies,

• MA Linguistics School of Oriental and African Studies,

• BA African Language and Culture School of Oriental and African Studies,

Appointments

Other academic

• Teaching Fellow in Swahili, University of Edinburgh (4/9/2017 - 27/8/2021)