The Virtual Institute of Mambila Studies

VIMS seeks to collate and connect the different research and researchers with an interest on the Mambila people of Nigeria and Cameroon, their language and the area in which they live. We take a broad view of Mambila, including other groups speaking related languages such as the Kwanja, Wute, Wawa, Njerep (3 speakers at last count!) Twendi and so on...

It has been set up by David Zeitlyn (see below) in conjunction with Bruce Connell

The following link will download a photograph of a house in Somié, Cameroon from which much of this research has taken place. The photograph of "Wolfson College, Somié" is about 115K large, and can be downloaded from here.

Fellow travellers

• Roger Blench, Linguist, Cambridge Institute for the Study of Pacific and African Languages
• Mona Perrin Linguist, SIL.
• Quentin Gausset, research student in anthropology, Université Libre de Bruxelles
• Gilbert Schneider, erstwhile missionary among Mambila and elsewhere in Cameroon

  Other researchers known to be working on Mambila

  
  
  • Professor Charles Frantz
  • Rolf Theil Edresen, Norway
  • Gladys Guarisma, Lacito Paris

  Research projects currently underway

  • Bruce Connell ESRC funded Comparative survey of Mambila dialects
    
  • David Zeitlyn Kinship and language: a computer-aided study of social deixis
    in conversation. A project funded by the ESRC (UK) R000 23 3311
  The final report of this project can be accessed from here.

Data on Mambila

• Meek on the Mambila 1931 Note that this includes Rehfisch's field annotations from 1953
• Mambila Transcript with digitised recording
  
• Chapter on Mambila from the Cross and the Gods [A Look at Adamawa and Taraba States, Nigeria]
  by Patience Ahmed CAPRO Research Office 1992
• A bibliography of works on the Mambila can be obtained in two forms:
  Click here for Refer format (plain ascii)
  Click here for JRAI format (HTML)
  
• A mongraph on Mambila ethnography which includes both ethnographic introduction and transcripts of sacrifical oath-taking is currently in print:
  David Zeitlyn. Sua in Somié. Mambila Traditional religion. Vol. 41 of the Collectanea Insitutii Anthropos. ISBN 3-88345-375-7. List price is DM 78 and it is available from:

  Academia Verlag, Postfach 1663
  D-53734 Sankt Augustin
  Germany
  Fax 02241/341528

  Reviews of this book may be found in the following sources:
  The journal Anthropos vol. 90 pp.657-8 by Bertrand Masquelier.
  With the kind permission of the editor, the text of this review is now available, from here.

• Homepage of the Republic of Cameroon
• Mama for Story: publications celebrating the work of Sally Chilver
• Grassfields studies page

July 1995

Users since 2nd February 96