Anne Storch


Anne Storch is a German linguist and professor of African studies at the University of Cologne.

Career

Storch studied African linguistics, ethnology, and history at Frankfurt am Main.
From 1995 to 1999, she worked in the DFG Collaborative Research Center 268 Cultural Development and Language History in the West African Savannah Natural Area at the University of Frankfurt. As a doctoral student, she documented the Hõne language during several research trips to Nigeria. In 1999, she completed her PhD in African linguistics, where she wrote her dissertation on the topic Das Hone and his position in the Central Jukunoid. From 2000 to 2004, she held a junior professorship at the Institute for African Linguistics at the University of Frankfurt. Since 2004 she has been a full professor and member of the board at the Institute for African Studies at the University of Cologne.
In addition to Nigeria, Anne Storch has completed research trips in Sudan and Uganda.
From 2006 to 2009, she was chair of the Germany-wide African Studies Association. From 2014 to 2016 she was also President of the International Association for Colonial and Postcolonial Linguistics..
In 2017, she was awarded a Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation.
In 2018, Storch was elected to the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts.

Scientific focus

Anne Storch's work focuses on Benue-Congo, Atlantic, West Nilotic, comparative African studies and typology. In doing so, she examines in particular how the specific reality of life affects the respective language. Recently, for example, she has been concerned with the language acquisition and language use of African migrants in the Balearic Islands, who as street artists or other service providers in turn absorb and use linguistic elements of the tourists holidaying there.