Rasmus Bernander is a field linguist and historical(-typological) linguist. His main research interest revolves around various aspects of grammatical variation and change in Bantu languages, particularly in various Tanzanian Bantu languages, but also from a broader comparative perspective. He works at the University of Gothenburg, where he holds a position as a Researcher in African Languages in the Department of Languages and Literatures. He is currently leading a project sponsored by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (grant number P23-0101) on the use and spread of expressions of modality in Swahili focusing on historical changes including contact-induced change (“borrowing”) into Swahili (mostly from Arabic) and out of Swahili into other East African languages. He is also a joint researcher in the Japan-based ILCAA Joint Research Project Diachronic Perspectives on Language Description and Typology in Bantu and is part of the editorial team of the Nordic Journal of African Studies. He also teaches Swahili and other courses on the subject of African linguistics. He earned his PhD from the same university in 2017 with a thesis on the grammar of the Tanzanian Bantu language Manda (mgs), focusing on both the description and reconstruction of the language’s tense and aspect system. Before returning to his alma mater this year, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, in a project focusing on four other Bantu language varieties of Tanzania.
