LSA Fellow Salikoko S. Mufwene (University of Chicago) was elected to the American Philosophical Society (APS) on May 25, 2022. The APS is the oldest learned society in the United States.

Mufwene is one of the leading names in the world on the emergence of creoles and on globalization and language. His current research centers on evolutionary linguistics, focusing on the phylogenetic emergence of language and how languages have been affected by colonization and worldwide globalization. Of particular focus is the effects of indigenization and speciation of European languages in the colonies.

Mufwene was elected as a Fellow of the Society in 2018, the Institute for Advanced Study in Lyon (2010‒11), and was awarded a “médaille” du Collège de France in 2003. He is the author of The Ecology of Language Evolution and is the founding editor of the book series Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact (since 2001). One of his latest publications is the two-volume Cambridge Handbook of Language Contact (June 2022), the first of which is devoted to the role of population movement and contact as actuators of language change.