Lorenzo Maselli

Biography

Lorenzo Maselli (°1996) is Doctor assistant at Ghent University (Ghent, Belgium, EU) and Junior fellow at the Institute for the Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (Tokyo, Japan), as well as a former FWO - fundamental research PhD fellow (main institutions: UGent, UMons; partner institutions: ILCAA, ISP Gombe). Lorenzo's main interests lie in the fields of acoustic phonetics, articulation, phonological theory and typology, language documentation, and African linguistics. After obtaining a BA in Italian studies from Università degli Studi di Padova (partner institution: Scuola Galileiana di Studi Superiori), Lorenzo moved to Pisa to study at Scuola Normale Superiore (taking classes in phonetics and general linguistics). During this time, Lorenzo conducted fieldwork in Ethiopia and completed their education at École Normale Supérieure in Paris and at the University of California - Davis. After graduating, Lorenzo spent a year in Paris as an invited researcher at LLACAN, focussing on the phonetics of Nigerian and Ethiopian varieties. Subsequently, Lorenzo worked on the phonetic documentation of the West-Coastal Bantu varieties spoken in Lower Kasai. This research culminated in the obtention of two doctoral titles, one in African Studies from UGent and the other in Psychology and Education Sciences from UMons. Lorenzo is currently working on the description of labial-velar and implosive consonants in the Bantu, Ubangi, and Central Sudanic languages of northern Democratic Republic of Congo and southern Central African Republic, in an area known as the Congo-Ubangi watershed.