Roland Kiessling (German: Roland Kießling; born 25 July 1962 in Hamburg, West Germany) is a German linguist and Africanist. Kiessling's research interests include language documentation, phonetics, historical linguistics, Cushitic languages (particularly the South Cushitic languages), Nilotic languages (particularly the Southern Nilotic languages), Niger-Congo languages^[1] (particularly the Southern Bantoid languages), and !Xoon.^[2][3]

Biography

Kiessling studied African Studies and Phonetics at the University of Hamburg, where he obtained a PhD in 1993 and Habilitation in 2000. From 1990 to 1993, he was a research associate in a DFG project led by Ludwig Gerhardt, where he worked on Iraqw texts. Afterwards, he was a research assistant from 1993 to 1999 at the Institute for African Studies and Ethiopian Studies at the University of Hamburg.^[4]

Kiessling received the Kurt Hartwig Siemers Prize from the Hamburg Scientific Foundation in 1995. From 2001 to 2006, he was a DFG Heisenberg fellow.

Since 1 October 2006 he has been Professor of African studies at the University of Hamburg.

Selected publications

• Eine Grammatik des Burunge (= Afrikanistische Forschungen. Band 13). Research-and-Progress-Verlag, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-929491-03-6 (zugleich Dissertation, Hamburg 1994).
• editor, with Paul Berger: Iraqw texts (= Archiv afrikanistischer Manuskripte. Band 4). Köppe, Köln 1998, ISBN 3-927620-34-3.
• with Maarten Mous and Martha Qorro: Iraqw-English dictionary. With an English and a thesaurus index texts (= Kuschitische Sprachstudien. Band 18). Köppe, Köln 2002, ISBN 3-89645-065-4.
• editor, with Theda Schumann, Mechthild Reh and Ludwig Gerhardt: Aktuelle Forschungen zu afrikanischen Sprachen. Sprachwissenschaftliche Beiträge zum 14. Afrikanistentag, Hamburg, 11. – 14. Oktober 2000. Köppe, Köln 2002, ISBN 3-89645-401-3.
• Die Rekonstruktion der südkuschitischen Sprachen (West-Rift). Von den systemlinguistischen Manifestationen zum gesellschaftlichen Rahmen des Sprachwandels (= Kuschitische Sprachstudien. Band 19). Köppe, Köln 2002, ISBN 3-89645-066-2 (zugleich Habilitationsschrift, Hamburg 2001).
• with Maarten Mous: The lexical reconstruction of West-Rift Southern Cushitic (= Kuschitische Sprachstudien. Band 21). Köppe, Köln 2003, ISBN 3-89645-068-9.
• Verbal serialisation in Isu (West-Ring). A Grassfields language of Cameroon (= Kuschitische Sprachstudien. Band 39). Köppe, Köln 2011, ISBN 978-3-89645-555-0.