Anne Maria Fehn

I am a linguist with a special interest in the history of southern Africa. While my main field of expertise lies with documentary linguistics and historical linguistics, I also take an avid interest in multidisciplinary approaches to population history research, including methodologies from human genetics and bioinformatics.

I hold a PhD in African Studies from the University of Cologne which I received for my work on the endangered Khoe-Kwadi language Ts’ixa. During my doctoral and postdoctoral research, I carried out fieldwork in Botswana, Namibia, Angola and Zimbabwe, where I had the opportunity to study multiple languages of the Khoe-Kwadi, Kx’a and Bantu families.

​I have been a member of Biopolis-CIBIO's "HumanEVOL - Human Evolutionary Genetics” group since 2014 and have contributed to multidisciplinary research projects focusing on the population history of southwestern Angola and the Okavango River Basin. At present, I am leading my own project on lexical exchange between the three southern African "Khoisan" families Kx'a, Tuu and Khoe-Kwadi in the context of population contact and genetic admixture.

Since 2019, I hold a FCT Junior Researcher contract in the frame of which I am expanding my knowledge on quantitative methodologies in the cultural sciences. My most recent publications focus on various aspects of the Khoe-Kwadi and southwestern Bantu languages, including phonology, tense-aspect morphology, subclassification and the role of language contact.