Felix Ameka

Felix K. Ameka is a Reader (UHD) at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). He is a socio-cultural cognitive linguistics primarily interested in language use in social interaction. He is concerned with questions of how cultural factors and cognitive processes as well as contact shape meanings and structures of languages and how these meanings are negotiated in everyday communication. His research focus is West African languages, mainly Kwa languages (Gbe, Ghana-Togo Mountain, Guang and Akanic groups) and other languages of wider communication, namely, Hausa and Fulfulde.

He is a LeidenASA research leave fellow in the first semester of the 2017-2018 academic year. During his time at the ASC he will be designing research projects and developing proposals for using language and linguistic practices as socio-cultural tools in understanding and addressing inequality in various spheres of life. His focus is on two projects: (i) Language practices as a key to understanding religion and history in Northern Ghana and (ii) Language use in interaction in healthcare and educational settings in Ghana. He will also be working with Prof. Chibuike Uche and Dr Froukje Krijtenburg on a research project on language and finance in Africa. In addition he will be working on invited keynote and plenary presentations at conferences on “The Other’s Other” (Cologne), Taboo (Spa) and Linguistic embodiment (Warsaw).