Academic conference entitled

“Pioneers of the Cracow School of African Studies: Prof. Roman Stopa – a portrait of an exceptional Africanist on the 120^th anniversary of his birth”

Cracow, 13^th May 2015

Conference programme

The conference will inaugurate the activities of the Jagiellonian Reserach Center for African Studies, an interdepartmental unit of the Jagiellonian University. The objective of the conference will be to discuss various aspects of African studies in connection with the Cracow tradition in this field.

The year 2015 is the 120^th anniversary of the birth and the 20^th anniversary of the death of the renowned Polish linguist, Africanist and specialist in click languages – Professor Roman Stopa, affiliated with the Jagiellonian University, at which he lectured on African languages, including Swahili, Hausa, Ewe, and also the languages of the Bushmen and Hottentots.

For many years, Professor Stopa conducted linguistic research in south-western Africa. He was also a lecturer of the comparative musicology of Africa. Professor Roman Stopa was the author of a number of academic and popular science texts, including “Studies in African languages: (essays on phonetics, semiotics and meaning)”; “The evolution of click sounds in some African languages”; “Powstanie mowy ludzkiej w oświetleniu antropologii i językoznawstwa” [The forming of human speech illuminated through anthropology and linguistic studies]; “Teksty hotentockie (Hai-/omn i nama) = Hai/omn- und Namtexte” [Hottentot texts]; “Mali ludzie z pustyni i puszczy” [The small peoples from the desert and the jungle].