Sara Petrollino

Dr Sara Petrollino is a linguist specialised in anthropological linguistics and African languages, and currently works as assistant professor at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics in the Faculty of Humanities. She is fascinated by the relationship between language and culture, and in her research she addresses questions related to linguistic relativity and the role played by language and culture in shaping worldviews and affecting cognition. Her research takes place at the intersection of linguistics and anthropology, and as such it is based on traditional ethnographic methods and long-term fieldwork among communities in East Africa. In the last decade she has carried out most of my research among the Hamar pastoralists of South-West Ethiopia, and she has been studying their language (a previously under-described and unwritten language) and their linguistic and cultural practices.