I am a Musoga, I was born in Busoga, I am rooted in Kisoga, and my native language is Lusoga. De facto, Lusoga is an oral Bantu language spoken in the East of Uganda. My entire research career has been devoted to putting the Lusoga language, the Kisoga traditions, the history of the Busoga Kingdom, and the Basoga people themselves on the map.
I was a lexicographer during my MA dissertation, and as an aside I produced the first monolingual Lusoga dictionary (Eiwanika). I was a linguist during my PhD thesis, and as an aside I produced the first scientific grammar of the language (Manual for Teachers). During the initial phase of my postdoc I was a corpus builder, and as an aside I produced the first academic collection of oral transcriptions of spoken Lusoga (Owayanga).
During the second phase of my postdoc, having completed the Boasian ‘dictionary-grammar-text’ trilogy for a single language by then, I focused on two threads: (i) I delved deeper into the core linguistics of Lusoga, and (ii) I ventured into the preservation of endangered and unrecorded languages in Busoga, like Lower Nyole.
During the current, third, phase of my postdoc, I have widened the scopes even further, going beyond Busoga and even beyond Uganda, and (i) I am now engaged in language and culture documentation in Uganda as a whole, taking in the speakers of Luganda, Rukiga, Acholi, etc., and (ii) I help with the study of modality in Swahili.
