News

Equatorial Guinea: the plurality of its cultures, languages and literatures
I am delighted about the publication of our double special issue about Equatorial Guinea in the online journal Quo Vadis, Romania? (59-60/2022). Together with Julia Borst (Bremen), Max Doppelbauer (Viena) and Elisa Rizo (Iowa) we edited twelve articles, both from well-known scholars in the field and from junior researchers, about a broad range of topics. As a whole, the volume offers a diverse insight in the plural and fascinating cultures, languages and literatures of Equatorial Guinea. Enjoy the reading!
The entire volume can be downloaded here; to get to the different papers, please go the journal's webpage.

Multilingualism and Spanish in Equatorial Guinea: presentation at the University of Lausanne (December 2nd 2022, 10:15-11:45)
I am looking forward to talking about the dynamic and complex multilingual setting in Equatorial Guinea and about the Equatoguinean Spanish with a group of students, researchers and other interested people at the University of Lausanne. Many thanks to Oxana Danilova and Mónica Castillo Lluch (Université de Lausanne, Section d’espagnol) for the kind invitation!

Invitation to join the book presentation of Voces de una comunidad africana poco visible (Diwan Mayrit 2022)
The publishing house Diwan Mayrit (Madrid) organizes a dynamic presentation of my book Voces de una comunidad africana poco visible: los guineoecuatorianos en Madrid on Friday, 23rd September 2022 at 19:00. The following experts will join us: Prof. Dr. Raúl Sánchez Molina (anthropology, UNED, Madrid), Dr. Yolanda Aixelà Cabré (anthropology, CSIC, Barcelona), Prof. Dr. Yvette Bürki (Hispanic studies and sociolinguistics, University of Bern), Juan Riochí Siafá (Equatoguinean researcher and writer).
As the event is hybrid, everyone who is interested but cannot be in Madrid at the time of the presentation, can join us via Facebook (facebook.com/diwan.mayrit) or Zoom. Please get in touch with me (sandra.schlumpf@unibas.ch) to get the Zoom-link prior to the event!

Everyone is invited to our evening on Equatorial Guinea (University of Basel, May 25th 2022, 18:15)
Together with Sara Carreira, I will talk about our experiences in Equatorial Guinea in February and March 2022. We spent one month both on the island of Bioko and on the continental part of the country, Río Muni, to collect sociolinguistic and dialectological data about the Spanish spoken in Equatorial Guinea. Countless nice moments, great collaborations, beautiful landscapes… and a lot of hard work contributed to a great research stay. If you are interested in hearing about our experiences and seeing a large number of photos, don’t hesitate to join us on Wednesday, May 25th 2022, 18:15, at the Seminar für Iberoromanistik, University of Basel!

Voces de una comunidad africana poco visible. Los guineoecuatorianos en Madrid (Diwan Mayrit, 2022)
This monograph presents the major results of my linguistic and anthropological investigation of the Equatoguinean community in Madrid. Almost 50 Equatoguineans who live in the Autonomous Community of Madrid have contributed to this study – thank you very much for your support and all the beautiful interviews which I could realize! I hope this book contributes to a better understanding between Equatorial Guinea and Spain and helps to give the Equatoguineans in Spain more visibility and recognition!
The book can be purchased via the Editorial Diwan Mayrit (Madrid): http://www.diwan.es/libro/voces-de-una-comunidad-africana-poco-visible-los-guineoecuatorianos-en-madrid_650510

Spanish in Equatorial Guinea: presentation at the University of Bern (4th April 2022, 14:15-15:45)
It is a pleasure for me to talk about the Equatoguinean Spanish and the sociolinguistic situation of Equatorial Guinea for the first time after the research stay in the country. Many thanks to Yvette Bürki (Instituto de Lenguas y Literaturas Hispánicas, University of Bern) for this opportunity and the kind invitation! The talk will be transmitted via Zoom (see the link on the PDF).

CulturAntena
On the initiative of the team of the Cultural Center of Spain in Malabo, we recorded a podcast episode for the CulturAntena channel. It was a nice opportunity to synthesize the reasons for the oblivion of Equatorial Guinea as a Spanish-speaking country and to show the importance of the country for the studies of Hispanic Philology. Hopefully this small contribution can help to improve the visibility of Equatorial Guinea and of the Equatoguinean Spanish.
The podcast can be listened to from the following link: https://www.ivoox.com/player_ej_82433479_6_1.html

Talking about the importance of Equatorial Guinea as a Spanish-speaking country (Centro Cultural de España en Bata)
It was a great pleasure to present our research on and our interest as linguists in Equatorial Guinea at the Spanish Cultural Center of Bata (1st March). We talked about the low visibility of the country in the Spanish-speaking world and about possible reasons for its oblivion. We also took the opportunity to talk about the objectives and contents of our research project. In the audience there were not only good friends, but also students of Hispanic Philology as well as other interested people and the team of the Center. We were particularly pleased that the Equatoguinean audience felt addressed and moved by the topic. Indeed, they themselves note and regret the low visibility of their country abroad. Hopefully some young Equatoguineans will be motivated to study their languages and the Spanish spoken in their own country!

Presentation about the linguistic diversity in the Spanish-speaking world (Centro Cultural de España en Malabo)
It was a pleasure to present our research in Equatorial Guinea!
We were excited to talk about linguistics and the linguistic diversity in the Spanish-speaking world to a very heterogeneous group of people at the Spanish Cultural Centre of Malabo during one of the sessions of the «Oral Resources Laboratory». After introducing the audience to Switzerland with some background information, pictures of different landscapes, a video of Basel and the Swiss German song «Wiederseh» by Bligg and Marc Sway (2021), we talked about different topics of linguistic research and presented some examples of the linguistic diversity in the Spanish-speaking world. One girl who was attending the conference correctly noticed that in the well-known «Catalog of Hispanic voices» Equatorial Guinea was not represented! In the last part of our presentation, we talked about our current research project and could even recruit some participants!

Sara Carreira won the prize awarded in 2021 by the Sociedad Suiza de Estudios Hispánicos for the best pre-doctoral thesis submitted in a Department of Hispanic Studies in Switzerland: Aproximación al comportamiento y a las actitudes lingüísticas de la juventud coruñesa. Resultados de una investigación basada en cuestionarios y entrevistas (2020) (first supervisor: Sandra Schlumpf, second supervisor: Lorenza Mondada, University of Basel). Congratulations!

De-constructing “borders” in language contact situations
Panel co-organized with Santiago Sánchez Moreano (Open University, UK) within the international congress Challenging Borders, Challenging Categorizations: From/Between Borders, held at the University of Bern, Switzerland, from 11th to 13thNovember 2021. Three well-known specialists participated in our panel: Anna Babel (Ohio State University), Adil Moustaoui (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and Jorge Gómez Rendón (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador).

During the fall semester of 2021, three well-known scholars shared their knowledge of Equatorial Guinea in three conferences (online via Zoom) as part of the seminar «¿Guinea Ecuatorial como parte de la Hispanidad? / Equatorial Guinea as part of la Hispanidad?»:

4th October 2021 at 12:15 (CET)
Dra. Susana Castillo Rodríguez (SUNY Geneseo, New York): «La hispanización de Guinea Ecuatorial: panorama histórico y consecuencias actuales»

11th October 2021 at 12:15 (CET)
Dr. Max Doppelbauer (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel): «Política lingüística postcolonial en Guinea Ecuatorial y la Academia Ecuatoguineana de la Lengua Española (AEGLE)»

1st November 2021 at 12:15 (CET)
Juan Riochí Siafá (escritor e investigador independiente, especialista en literatura africana, inmigración y género): «La literatura de Guinea Ecuatorial: autoras y autores, sus obras y el tema de su (in)visibilidad»

It was a great pleasure to host Prof. Dr. Justo Bolekia Boleká (University of Salamanca, Spain) at the Seminar for Ibero-Romance Studies of the University of Basel in October 2019. It was a unique opportunity to get first-hand-insights into the Bubi language and its position in the Equatoguinean society. First, Prof. Bolekia Boleká offered us an introductory lesson about the Bubi language and then he presented an interesting conference entitled: «La lengua Bubi: resistencia, rehabilitación y empoderamiento».

In March 2019 I organized a small event about Equatorial Guinea at the Seminar for Ibero-Romance Studies of the University of Basel. After a general introduction to the country, I presented a series of photos taken during my trip to the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea, in January 2019. On this occasion, a special guest from Equatorial Guinea joined us: Óscar A. Nchaso Bekari. He presented his last work and shared with us his spirit as a motivational speaker.

It was a great honor to host Prof. Dr. John M. Lipski (Penn State University, USA) at the Seminar for Ibero-Romance Studies of the University of Basel in February 2016. During an entire week, Prof. Lipski shared his broad knowledge and his love for linguistics with a group of doctoral students of different universities of Switzerland. We all learnt a lot about the main topic of this event (and a lot of other interesting curiosities of the Spanish-speaking world): «Contactos lingüísticos afrohispánicos y la vuelta a África: Guinea Ecuatorial».