2015 PhD Linguistics (University at Buffalo)

2010 MA Language Documentation and Description (SOAS, University of London)

2009 BA German and Linguistics (University of Oxford)

• 2019–pres. Junior Professor · Institut für Afrikanistik und Ägyptologie, Universität zu Köln
• 2016–2019  Postdoctoral Research Associate, VariKin Project · Department of Anthropology & Archaeology, University of Bristol
• 2015–2016  Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow · Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg

I am interested in the diversity of ways in which humans use language to mediate their relationships with others, particularly at the fine-grained level of everyday interaction. My research to date has mostly focused on language and social relations among Datooga-speakers of Tanzania, with whom I have conducted almost two years of linguistic and ethnographic fieldwork. My current project explores how Datooga-speaking children are socialised into kinship relations through everyday linguistic and bodily practice.

I also have an active interest in language documentation and description and am in the process of creating a video corpus of spontaneous interaction in Datooga. 

Journal Articles

• Mitchell, Alice. In press. Documenting difference: Interactional approaches to the documentation of special registers. In Rich Sandoval and Nicholas Williams (eds.), Interactional approaches to language documentation (Language Documentation & Conservation SP).
• Blythe, Joe, Jeremiah Tunmuck, Alice Mitchell, and Péter Rácz. 2020. Acquiring the lexicon and grammar of universal kinship. Language 96(3). 661–695.
• Fleming, Luke, Alice Mitchell, and Isabelle Ribot. 2019. In the name of the father-in-law: Pastoralism, patriarchy, and the sociolinguistic prehistory of eastern and southern Africa. Sociolinguistic Studies 13(2–4). 171–192.
• Mitchell, Alice. 2018. Allusive reference and other-oriented stance in an affinal avoidance register. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 28(1). 4–21.
• Mitchell, Alice. 2015. Words that smell like Father-in-law: A linguistic description of the Datooga avoidance register. Anthropological Linguistics 57(2). 195–217
• Childs, G. Tucker, Jeff Good, and Alice Mitchell. 2014. Beyond the ancestral code: Towards a model for sociolinguistic language documentation. Language Documentation & Conservation 8. 168–191.

Books

• Lovegren, Jesse, Alice Mitchell, and Natsuko Nakagawa. 2015. The Wala language of Malaita, Solomon Islands. Canberra: Asia-Pacific Linguistics, Australian National University.

Book Chapters

• Mitchell, Alice. 2020. “Oh, bald father!”: Kinship and swearing among Datooga of Tanzania. Nico Nassenstein & Anne Storch (eds.), Swearing and cursing: Contexts and practices in a critical linguistic perspective, 79–102. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Mitchell, Alice. In press. Phasal polarity in Barabaiga and Gisamjanga Datooga (Nilotic): Interactions with tense, aspect, and participant expectation. Raija Kramer (ed.), The Expression of Phasal Polarity in African Languages. Empirical Approaches to Language Typology. Mouton de Gruyter.
• Mitchell, Alice and Ayu’nwi Neba. 2019. Special-purpose registers of language in Africa. In H. Ekkehard Wolff (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics, 513–534. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mitchell, Alice. 2017. The pragmatics of a kinship term: The meaning and use of íiyá ‘mother’ in Datooga (Nilotic). In Raija Kramer & Roland Kießling (eds.), Mechthildian Approaches to Afrikanistik: Advances in language based research on Africa. Festschrift für Mechthild Reh, 287–301. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.