Full Professor (Directeur d’études), Chair Berber linguistics, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, LIER-FYT (FRE2024), Paris
Research Director (Directeur de recherche), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – LIER-FYT (FRE2024), Paris
Former positions
Senior Research Professor in African Languages and Literatures, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Department of Human Sciences for the Formation “Riccardo Massa”, Full-time tenured position, 2008-2014
Research Professor in African Languages and Literatures, Università della Calabria, Department of Linguistics, Full-time tenured position, 2004-2008
FWO-fellow/Research Foundation Flanders, Ghent University, Department of African Languages, 2005-2014
Postdoctoral researcher, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), Leiden University, Department of Languages and Cultures of the Middle East, 2001-2004
Postdoctoral researcher (BOF), Ghent University, Department of Oriental Languages and Cultures, 1999-2000
Postdoctoral researcher (ATER), I.N.A.L.C.O. (Paris), Department of African Languages and Cultures, 1998-1999
Ph.D. researcher, I.N.A.L.C.O. (Paris), Department of African Languages and Cultures, 1995-1998
French National Monitoring in Human and Social Sciences, I.N.A.L.C.O. (Paris), Department of African Languages and Cultures, 1995-1998
Degrees
Habilitation in “Sciences du langage”, EHESS, Paris, 2010; Des formes linguistiques aux processus langagiers
Ph.D. in Linguistics, INALCO, Paris, 1999; Syntaxe intégrée de l’énoncé non-verbal berbère
Postgraduate (Diplôme d’études approfondies) in Linguistics, INALCO, Paris, 1995
Masters in Oriental Languages and Cultures, Ghent University, Ghent, 1994
Awards
2019: Elected as Academician, Academia Europaea.
2014: Elected as Academician, Accademia Ambrosiana, Milan.
2014: Elected as founding member of the “Classe Africa” of the Accademia Ambrosiana, Milan.
2014: Elected as founding member of the “Section Berbero” of the Accademia Ambrosiana, Milan.
Supervision of scientific dissertations and projects
I have supervised and co-supervised numerous post-doc projects (9), PhD (10) dissertations, as well as Master (55) dissertations at different European universities.
Teaching and related responsibilities
Since 2018, I occupy the Chair of Berber Linguistics – Postgraduate and doctoral research seminar, EHESS, Paris (see dedicated page on this site).
Since 1995, I have delivered numerous courses and organised many seminars in linguistics, typology, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and computational linguistics at different European and extra-European universities.
I have served as visiting Professor and researcher at several institutions in Europe, in the USA, and in Africa.
I have served as invited speaker to deliver conferences at post-graduate seminars at different universities around the world.
Educational Tutor of the Faculty “ Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione”, Università di Milano-Bicocca, 2010-2014.
Coordinator of the Studies of the languages and cultures of the Arab World, Università di Milano-Bicocca, 2008-2014.
Member of the scholarly committee for the evaluation and admission of internal and external academic credits, Università di Milano-Bicocca since, 2008-2014.
Funding
I have obtained funding and scholarly subsidies from different international institutions (e.g. FWO, BOF, NWO, LUF, CNWS, PRIN, CNRS) for numerous research projects, fieldwork, the organisation of and participation in scholarly meetings (conferences, workshops, panels), and the publication of books and articles.
Fieldwork and research abroad
I have stayed for several long fieldwork and research periods in Africa and in Europe.
I have assembled since 1993 a vast multimodal corpus of linguistic, sociolinguistic, and ethnographic data and expertise, mainly in the context of North Africa and its diaspora (Berber, Arabic, contact situations). All materials are digitised and systematised.
I have thoroughly studied from a geolinguistic and typological perspective the Rif area (North, Northwest, and Northeast Morocco), which resulted in the publication of the Atlas of the Rif (Lafkioui Mena B., 2007. Atlas linguistique des variétés berbères du Rif. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, format « A3 », in colour, 356 maps + 47 tables; a complete PDF is freely downloadable from https://atlasrif.wordpress.com/).
International conferences and workshops
I have organised various international conferences, workshops, and panels at different European and extra-European universities.
I have participated in various international conferences and workshops at different European and extra-European universities.
Institutional responsibilities
2014 – present, Member Steering Committee and Scientific Council of Classe di Studi africani, Accademia Ambrosiana
2014 – 2019, Member Scientific Council of the Laboratoire d’excellence Empirical Foundations of Linguistics, Paris.
2005 – 2019, Member of Scholarly committee of Ph.D. school Languages and Cultures of Africa, Ghent University.
2011– 2018, Member Scientific Council of Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca – Albo Revisori – Cineca (SH4_6, SH4_8, SH5_10).
2006 – 2018, Member Scholarly committee of the Italian Ph.D. school Collegio di Dottorato in Storia economica, Demografia, Istituzioni e Società nei Paesi Mediterranei.
2008 – 2014, Educational Tutor Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Università di Milano-Bicocca.
2008 – 2014, Member Scholarly committee Evaluation and admission of academic credits, Univ. di Milano-Bicocca.
2008 – 2014, Coordinator Studies of the languages and cultures of the Arab World, Università di Milano-Bicocca.
2008 – 2012, Co-coordinator Scholarly committee International Milan-Tizi Ouzou-Lausanne Research Programme on Corpus Linguistics, Università di Milano-Bicocca/Université de Tizi Ouzou/Université de Lausanne.
1996 – 2000, Member of the International Research Committee of the “International Network of Language Planning of Berber” created on 25/07/1996, INALCO, Paris.
Peer reviewing
I have been a peer reviewer of a considerable number of papers and books submitted to leading international journals (e.g. Linguistics, Bilingualism, Discourse Studies, Linguistic Inquiry), series & collections (e.g. Studies in Multilingualism), and publishers (e.g. de Gruyter, Elsevier, OUP). I have also been member of numerous advisory boards and scientific committees for various conferences and workshops, along with various international academic selection and recruitment committees.
Editorial boards (selection)
International Journal Dialectologia et Geolinguistica (ISSN 1867-0903), De Gruyter
International Journal Afrika Focus (ISSN 0772-084X)
Publication Series Studi Camito-semitici (ISSN 2035-5068)