Postdoctoral Research Fellow 

MA (Griffith), PhD (UKZN)
Email: jonesleekerry@gmail.com

Visit the website for my professional linguistic consultancy, African Tongue: https://www.africantongue.co.za/

Research interests:

• Sociolinguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Language documentation and preservation of endangered Ju, Tuu and Khoe languages (previously known as Khoesan languages)
• Collaborative resource development with speakers of endangered languages 
• Language attitudes
• Language contact
• Indigenous Knowledge Systems
• Digital humanities

Postdoctoral research project:

An annotated digital compilation of food plants based on the unpublished Maguire Ethnobotanical Collection in Ju'|hoansi, an endangered Ju language of southern Africa

This project aims to share, via open-source digital means, an historical collection of San ethnobotanical data. The data was collected between 1954 and 1975 by Mr Brian Maguire and his wife Dr Judy Maguire in close collaboration with the Ju|’hoan and !Xoo communities of the Kalahari. This is a comprehensive collection, meticulously documented in various mediums available at the time (slides, photographs, field-notes, journals, manuscripts and drawings), providing detailed descriptions of plant use by our indigenous first peoples, most especially food plants in water scarce areas. Unfortunately, in the early 1970s drastic change was seen in the lifeways of the San. Such changes led to acculturation and a steady decrease in the transfer of indigenous knowledge from one generation to the next. For this reason, it is of great scientific, national and heritage importance that this collection be digitised, developed into a usable resource and shared with younger generations. We have lost the opportunity to learn from our forefathers about our indigenous plants; however, this collection gives us a last window of opportunity to learn more about the sustainable use of indigenous plants in an African context. This project has three components: digitisation, resource development and education.  

Publications:

View my publications at https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1110-0819.

Last Modified: Thu, 14 Jan 2021 22:48:06 SAST