Sinfree Makoni

Sinfree Makoni was born in Zimbabwe. He holds a BA in English (Hons) with a specialty in Linguistics from the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Edinburgh University, Scotland. He taught at several universities in southern Africa, notably the University of the Western Cape, Bellville, and University of Cape Town. He was a postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan. He is currently Director of African Studies at Pennsylvania State University and Interim Director of the Africana Research Center and Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics and the African Studies Program at Pennsylvania State University, Extraordinary Professor at University of the Western Cape and North-West University, and a Visiting Professor at Nelson Mandela University and Visiting Researcher at the University of Zululand, South Africa. He was a Carnegie Diaspora Fellow at Laikipia University, Kenya. He is recipient of the prestigious Advanced CODESRIA Humanities Fellowship.  He has published extensively in the areas of Language and Aging, Language and Security, Language Policy and Planning, Southern Epistemologies, and Decoloniality. He has published 120 articles and book chapters and co-edited 15 books. His most recent publications include Innovations and Challenges to Applied Linguistics from the Global South (co-authored with A. Pennycook; London and New York: Routledge Press, 2020); Integrational Linguistics and Philosophy of Language in the Global South (S. Makoni, D. Verity, & A. Kaiper-Marquez, eds.; London and New York: Routledge Press, 2021); The Languaging of Higher Education in the Global South: De-Colonizing the Language of Scholarship and Pedagogy (S. Makoni, C. Severo, A. Abdelhay & A. Kapier-Marquez, eds.; London and New York: Routledge Press, 2022); Language in the Global Souths S. Makoni, A., Kaiper-Marquez, & L. Mokwena, eds., London and New York: Routledge Press, 2022); and Decolonial Voices, Language and Race (S. Makoni, M. Madany-Saa, B. Antia, & R. Gomez, eds., Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2022) and From Decolonial Linguistics to Southern Sociolinguistics, Deumert, & S.Makoni,(eds) Multilingual Matters, 2023. Makoni, S, Severo, C, Abdelhay, A, Kaiper-Marquez and Milojicic, V (eds) Shades of Decolonial Voices in Linguistics. Multilingual Matters (2023).  He is the architect of the African Studies Global Virtual Forum, which seeks to engage scholars in both the Global North and Global South. The Global Virtual Forum will host its inaugural  School at Nelson Mandela University in July 2023 and is organized jointly by the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Connecticut. He is also co-editor of the new Multilingual Matters book series Global Forum on Southern Epistemologies. He currently serves as co-editor of the Journal of Applied Linguistics and Ampersand Journal of Language Sciences and Bilingualism.