Meeting research partners and team members in Bulawayo and Harare, Zimbabwe, May 2022

From mid-May to early June 2022, I spent time in Zimbabwe to meet team member Prof. Sambulo Ndlovu and other colleagues from Great Zimbabwe University in Masvingo to share current research experiences, come up with new ideas and also discuss future cooperations between the universities involved in the research project (such as a “memorandum of understanding” between JGU Mainz and GZU). Together with researcher Laura Seel (GU Frankfurt) who works on ritualized avoidance language in Ndebele, research assistants (such as Keith Moyo) and others were met and current research perspectives could be shared extensively. In the Zimbabwean capital Harare in early June 2022, Keith Moyo, Sambulo Ndlovu and I were able to meet the representative of the German Academic Exchange Service, Dr. Wolfram Full, with whom current research and teaching at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare (and potential connections to our project) were discussed.