KPAAM-CAM stands for Key Pluridisciplinary Advances on African Multilingualism – CAMeroon. It is an international research project aimed to understand the linguistic and sociocultural dynamics of individual multilingualism in Cameroon, and to explore how they pattern in time and space, with special attention to rural, more traditional contexts. The KPAAM-CAM research team includes linguists, sociolinguists, anthropologists, and geographers from a number of universities in the US (Buffalo, SUNY), Cameroon (Yaounde, Buea, CATUC – Bamenda), and Europe (Florence).
KPAAM-CAM started in 2014 after the main project it stems from received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (BCS#1360763). The University of Florence (Italy) has also contributed to the project for the academic year 2014-2015. Its first phase ended in 2018 and was followed by KPAAM-CAM GEO, where the collaboration was extended to include also geographers. In October 2021, KPAAM-CAM has received a further grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to focus on the study of the consequences of forced mobility and displacement on the vitality of small-scale languages and multilingualism. This new phase is called KPAAM-CAM IDP (where IDP stands for “Internally Displaced Person”) and will last until 2024.
