Stefan was a Dutch post-doc trained at University of Leiden (Netherlands) and active as a research associate at the University of Bayreuth (Germany), joined the project in September 2006 to work on Bangime in the village of Bounou. His tragic death in Mali due to a sudden illness in February 2007 was a devastating blow to West African linguistics. In his short career he did extensive fieldwork in Cameroon and Burkina Faso, made important contributions to Gur and West Atlantic linguistics, and was in the process of becoming one of the major overall authorities on West African linguistics. This website presents the materials we were able to salvage from his work on Bangime: a handout he prepared for a workshop on Dogon languages in Bamako December 2006, and scans from his notebooks (courtesy of the Elders family). The original notebooks are archived at the University of Leiden library. We are also in possession of two partially recorded cassettes, some flora specimens, and a number of ethnographic photographs that we will process and disseminate. Click on the Bangime tab for more on Elders' work on this language.
