Prof. Dr. Valentine Ubanako - Colonial Letters and the Contact of Knowledges

Prof. Dr. Valentine Ubanako is a Professor of English Linguistics and Translation Studies at the University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon. His research focuses on language evolution and postcolonial linguistics within Africa. As an international scholar, Prof. Ubanako has held several fellowships across Europe and Africa and has been a key collaborator on major international research initiatives, including the British Council ELTRA Project at the University of Bath.

During his stay at the University of Bayreuth, Prof. Ubanako served as a member of the Cluster Project "Colonial Letters and the Contact of Knowledges." Notably, he served as an International Collaborator for research investigating the challenges of English Medium Instruction (EMI) and the learning strategies of primary school children within Cameroon’s multilingual Francophone context, and contributed to the Creative Lives of African Universities (AFRIUNI) Project at the University of Bristol.

The main purpose of his visit to the institute was to focus on finalizing the editorial work for the multidisciplinary volume "Contact and Conflict of Knowledges in Colonial Correspondences," forthcoming in the Cluster series at Brill. Additional aims included utilizing the University’s specialized corpus of colonial letters to lay the groundwork for his future research project titled “Sociocultural address forms in colonial correspondence.”

His academic residency proved highly productive and impactful. It strengthened institutional ties between the University of Yaoundé I and the University of Bayreuth, expanded collaborative research within the Cluster Project, and fostered new developments in the study of colonial linguistics and sociocultural communication.