Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu is a Professor of Linguistics in the Department of English. He is recognized internationally for his scholarship in the field of sociolinguistics, and more specifically in the areas of codeswitching, multilingualism, language policy and planning, world Englishes, language and identity, and African linguistics. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was ranked three times as an excellent Graduate Teaching Assistant, and has also received a Fulbright award.

Before joining Howard University Dr Kamwangamalu taught linguistics at the National University of Singapore, the University of Swaziland, and the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, where he was Professor and Director of the Linguistics Program. He is on the editorial boards of World Englishes and the series Studies in Language Policy in South Africa. He has served as editor of Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, and as a manuscript consultant for the University of Natal Press (South Africa), Multilingual Matters, Applied Linguistics, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, and Multilingua – Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication.

His publications include a co-edited book, Language and Institutions in Africa (2001), a monograph, The Language Planning Situation in South Africa (2001), some fifty peer-refereed articles, and book-length special issues he has been invited to guest-edit for Multilingua 17 (1998), International Journal of the Sociology of Language 144 (2000), World Englishes 21 (2002) and Language Problems and Language Planning (2005). Dr Kamwangamalu has presented over fifty scholarly papers at professional meetings in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Sociolinguistics in Africa and on a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language on African American English.