Koen Bostoen (°1975) has been a professor of African Linguistics and Swahili at Ghent University since 2011. His research focuses on the historical-comparative study of Bantu languages and on interdisciplinary approaches to the African past. He obtained an ERC Starting Grant for the KongoKing project (2012-2016) and an ERC Consolidator’s Grant for the BantuFirst project (2018-2022). Amongst others, he is the author of Des mots et des pots en bantou: une approche linguistique de l’histoire de la céramique en Afrique (2005, Peter Lang) and co-editor of Studies in African Comparative Linguistics, with Special Focus on Bantu and Mande (2005, RMCA), The Kongo Kingdom: Origins, Dynamics and Cosmopolitan Culture of an African Polity (2018, Cambridge University Press), Une archéologie des provinces septentrionales du royaume Kongo (2018, Archaeopress), The Bantu Languages, 2nd edition (2019, Taylor and Francis) and On reconstructing Proto-Bantu grammar (2022, Language Science Press).
