In 2014, the Gerda Henkel Foundation initiated a scholarship programme supporting young humanities scholars from Africa in honour of the foundation's founder, Lisa Maskell. It is the largest international support programme for PhD students in the history of the Foundation. The Lisa Maskell Fellowships aim to strengthen universities in the partner countries, to counter the outflow of qualified young scholars and to ensure the doctoral students enjoy excellent academic training.
In this dossier, L.I.S.A. publishes interviews with Lisa Maskell Fellows, in which they talk about their research projects as well as their experiences during their academic career and the Lisa Maskell fellowship.
Today, we welcome Anuoluwapọ Adéwùnmí ADÉTỌ̀MÍWÁ from Nigeria. After graduating from the University of Lagos with a B.A. as well as an M.A., she started her PhD in African Studies with the thesis Language and Culture Change: Study of Yorùbá in Èkó, Nigeria and Kétou, Benin Republic at the University of Ghana in 2022.
“Compare, investigate, and document the current status of the two Yorùbá speech communities”
L.I.S.A.: What is your PhD project about and what got you interested in the chosen topic to begin with?
Anuoluwapọ Adéwùnmí ADÉTỌ̀MÍWA: The title of my PhD project is ‘‘Language and Culture Change: Study of Yorùbá in Èkó, Nigeria and Kétou, Benin Republic’’. I am interested in this topic because it will be a synchronic study of Yorùbá in two countries. In Èkó, Nigeria, I observed that the Yorùbá language and culture are changing through interference with foreign languages and cultures. There are heavy code-mixing and code-switching in the language. The elements of culture have also been affected because of people migrating to the community within and outside the country. On the contrary, the Yorùbá in Kétou in Benin Republic still retains a form of Yorùbá originality. So, I intend to compare, investigate, and document the current status of the two Yorùbá speech communities in two different countries (Anglophone and Francophone).