Jane Akinyi Ngala Oduor

Jane Akinyi Ngala Oduor is an associate professor of linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Languages at The University of Nairobi. She obtained a Bachelor of Education and a Master of Philosophy in English degree from Moi University and a Doctorate in Linguistics from the University of Nairobi. She has a postdoc training in experimental phonetics and is also an ELDP trained language documenter.
Her area of specialisation is phonology. Her research interests are in phonology, phonetics and language documentation as well as the interfaces between pragmatics and the phonology of African languages. She also has an interest in African sociolinguistics, especially, multilingualism and language policy issues in education as well as language teaching. As a result of these interests, she has carried out a preliminary documentation of the Okiek language of Kenya through the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) grant. She recently participated in two major research projects, namely, ‘Language of Instruction and Transitions in Education Systems (LITES)’ and ‘School Based Teacher Support System (SBTSS)’ as one of the principal consultants/ investigators with other team players from Kenya and beyond. In the latter project, the team provided support to the primary and secondary school teachers of the English language. 
She serves as a member of the executive committee of the Language Association of Eastern Africa (LAEA), the Vice-President of the African Pragmatics Association (APrA) and the president of the World Congress of African Linguistics (WOCAL).
 
During her fellowship at the ASCL, she will be working on research titled: ‘A Preliminary Documentation of the Language of Preserving, Cooking, Serving and Eating Fish among the Luo of Kenya’. She is affiliated to the CRG African languages archives - Unpacking local epistemologies.