An Archaeology of the Bantu Expansion

Peter R. Coutros is an anthropological archaeologist specialising in West and Central Africa. He received his PhD in 2017 from Yale University based on the research he directed at the Late Stone Age site of Diallowali in northern Senegal. He has extensive field experience in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University directing research in Democratic Republic of the Congo and Central African Republic.

Jessamy H. Doman received her PhD from the Department of Anthropology, Yale University, in 2017. She is an osteological and palaeoenvironmental specialist whose work has spanned the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, Miocene-Pliocene hominin evolution, and Pleistocene-Holocene socio-environmental change in West and Central Africa. She led several expeditions in Kenya, conducted fieldwork in Senegal, and worked as a forensic anthropologist at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Igor Matonda Sakala is an Associate Professor at the University of Kinshasa, Department of Historical Sciences. He received a joint PhD in African Languages and Cultures from Ghent University and History, Art History and Archaeology from Brussels University (ULB), based on his historical, archaeological, and linguistic research of the Inkisi Valley during the Kongo Kingdom. His research and teaching focuses on African precolonial and colonial history.

Koen Bostoen is a Professor of African Linguistics and Swahili at UGent. His research pertains to the past and present of Bantu languages and interdisciplinary approaches to Africa's ancient history with a special focus on the Bantu Expansion and the Kongo Kingdom. He obtained ERC Starting and Consolidator Grants for the KongoKing (2012-2016) and BantuFirst (2018-2023) projects, respectively.