Prof. Dr. Michael Meeuwis (born 1968) studied African History and Philology at Ghent University and general sociolinguistics at the Universities of Amsterdam and Antwerp. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Antwerp in 1997. He is presently Full Professor at the department of African Languages and Cultures of his alma mater, Ghent University, where he teaches Lingala, African sociolinguistics, and themes related to language, identity, and missionization in Africa. His domains of interest and publication include language policy and planning in the Belgian Congo, the colonial and missinary history and the grammar of Lingála, the ideological backgrounds of scientific knowledge production in colonial contexts, and the missionary and colonial history of the Belgian Congo.
Key publications
Meeuwis, Michael. 2021. Grammaire descriptive du lingála: Edition revue et élargie. München: Lincom. 325pp
Meeuwis, Michael. 2019. 'The linguistic features of Bangala before Lingala: The pidginization of Bobangi in the 1880s and 1890s.' Afrikanistik-Aegyptologie-Online 2019 (Serial article number 5012): 1-43 (https://www.afrikanistik-aegyptologie-online.de/archiv/2019/5012/).
Luyckfasseel, Margot and Michael Meeuwis. 2018. 'Ethnicity and language in the run-up to Congolese independence in the 1950s: Ba(Ki)Kongo and Ba(Li)Ngala.' Language Matters: Studies in the Languages of Africa 49 (3): 86-104.
Meeuwis, Michael. 2017. 'The furthest escape of all: Darkness and refuge in the Belgian Congo.' In: Graham Greene Studies, Vol. 1, edited by J. Stavick and J. Wise, pp. 56-81. Dahlonega: University of North Georgia Press.
Meeuwis, Michael. 2016. 'Taalstrijd in Afrika: het taalwetsartikel in het Koloniaal Charter van 1908 en de strijd van de Vlamingen en Afrikaners voor het Nederlands in Afrika tot 1960.' Wetenschappelijke Tijdingen Op Het Gebied Van De Geschiedenis Van De Vlaamse Beweging 75 (1): 27-61.
Meeuwis, Michael. 2017. 'Language legislation in the Belgian Colonial Charter of 1908: a textual-historical analysis.' In: Language rights: Critical concepts in language studies. Volume II: Language policy in education: Violations or rights for all? , edited by T. Skutnabb-Kangas and R. Phillipson, pp. 261-278. London: Routledge.
Meeuwis, Michael. 2013. 'Language in education and the media in the evaporating state of the DR Congo.' In: Multilingualism for empowerment: Studies in language policy in South Africa, edited by P. Cuvelier, T. Du Plessis, M. Meeuwis, R. Vandekerckhove and V. Webb, pp. 33-46. Pretoria: Van Schaik.