Brigitte Pakendorf (born 1970) is a

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and

geneticist A geneticist is a biologist or physician who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a scientist or a lecturer. Geneticists may perform general research on genetic process ...

at the

French National Centre for Scientific Research The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 engi ...

(CNRS).

Education

After receiving her MA in

biological anthropology Biological anthropology, also known as physical anthropology, is a natural science discipline concerned with the biological and behavioral aspects of human beings, their extinct hominin ancestors, and related non-human primates, particularly fro ...

in 1996, Pakendorf studied for two doctorates: one in biology, one in linguistics. She received the former in 2001 from the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (, also referred to as UHH) is a public university, public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('':de:Allgemeines Vorlesungswesen, ...

and the latter in 2007 from the

University of Leiden Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange as a Protestant institution, it holds the distinction of being the oldest university in the Neth ...

. This second thesis brought together her interests in dealing with contact in the prehistory of the Sakha, or

Yakuts The Yakuts or Sakha (, ; , ) are a Turkic ethnic group native to North Siberia, primarily the Republic of Sakha in the Russian Federation. They also inhabit some districts of the Krasnoyarsk Krai. They speak Yakut, which belongs to the Si ...

, from both linguistic and genetic perspectives. It received the 2008 prize for the best dissertation in linguistics defended at a Dutch university, awarded jointly by the Dutch Association for General Linguistics (AVT) and Association for Applied Linguistics (Anéla).

Career and honours

From 2006 to 2012 Pakendorf was leader of a

Max Planck Society The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. Founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, it was renamed to the M ...

junior research group on Comparative Population Linguistics at the

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (, shortened to MPI EVA) is a research institute based in Leipzig, Germany, that was founded in 1997. It is part of the Max Planck Society network. Well-known scientists currently based at ...

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

. In 2012 she took up a position as senior researcher (DR2) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in the laboratory ''Dynamique du langage'' (Language dynamics). She was promoted to senior researcher first class (DR1) in 2016, and exceptional class (DRCE) in 2018. Pakendorf has received numerous honours and awards for her research. In 2016 she was awarded a

CNRS Silver Medal The CNRS Silver Medal is a scientific award given every year to about fifteen researchers by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). It is awarded to a researcher for "the originality, quality and importance of their work, re ...

. In 2019 she was elected member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

Research

Pakendorf's research is interdisciplinary, bridging

biology Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, History of life, origin, evolution, and ...

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

and linguistics. She works on languages of Siberia, in particular

Even Even may refer to: General * Even (given name), a Norwegian male personal name * Even (surname), a Breton surname * Even (people), an ethnic group from Siberia and Russian Far East **Even language, a language spoken by the Evens * Odd and Even, a ...

Negidal Negidals (, "local people"; , ''negidaltsy'') are an Indigenous ethnic group in the Khabarovsk Krai in Russia, who live along the Amgun River and Amur River. The ethnonym "Negidal" is a Russian rendering of the Ewenki term ''ngegida'', which ...

and other

Tungusic languages The Tungusic languages (also known as Manchu–Tungus and Tungus) form a language family spoken in Eastern Siberia and Manchuria by Tungusic peoples. Many Tungusic languages are endangered. There are approximately 75,000 native speakers of the ...

. The topics that she has investigated include

prehistory Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use ...

language contact Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum ...

linguistic typology Linguistic typology (or language typology) is a field of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features to allow their comparison. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity and the co ...

areal linguistics Geolinguistics has been identified by some as being a branch of linguistics and by others as being an offshoot of language geography which is further defined in terms of being a branch of human geography. When seen as a branch of linguistics, geoli ...

molecular anthropology Molecular anthropology, also known as genetic anthropology, is the study of how molecular biology has contributed to the understanding of human evolution. This field of anthropology examines evolutionary links between ancient and modern human popu ...

, and

language documentation Language documentation (also: documentary linguistics) is a subfield of linguistics which aims to describe the grammar and use of human languages. It aims to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speec ...

. She has received major grants from the

German Research Foundation The German Research Foundation ( ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2019, the DFG had a funding bud ...

, Endangered Languages Documentation Programme,

Leakey Foundation Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (7 August 1903 – 1 October 1972) was a Kenyan-British palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist whose work was important in demonstrating that humans evolved in Africa, particularly through discoveries made at Olduvai ...

Volkswagen Foundation The Volkswagen Foundation (German: ''VolkswagenStiftung'') is the largest German private nonprofit organization involved in the promotion and support of academic research. It is not affiliated to the present company, the Volkswagen Group. It wa ...

and

Wenner-Gren Foundation Axel Lennart Wenner-Gren (5 June 1881 – 24 November 1961) was a Swedish entrepreneur and one of the wealthiest men in the world during the 1930s. Early life He was born on 5 June 1881 in Uddevalla, a town on the west coast of Sweden. He ...

to investigate and document the languages and history of the groups mentioned above.

Selected publications

* Pakendorf, Brigitte and Mark Stoneking. 2005. Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution. ''Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics'' 6, 165–183, * Pakendorf, Brigitte, Innokentij N. Novgorodov, Vladimir L. Osakovskij, Al'bina P. Danilova, Artur P. Protod'jakonov and Mark Stoneking. 2006 Investigating the effects of prehistoric migrations in Siberia: genetic variation and the origins of Yakuts. ''Human Genetics'' 120, 334–353. * Pickrell, Joseph K., Nick Patterson, Chiara Barbieri, Falko Berthold, Linda Gerlach, Tom Güldemann, Blesswell Kure, Sununguko Wata Mpoloka, Hirosi Nakagawa, Christfried Naumann, Mark Lipson, Po-Ru Loh, Joseph Lachance, Joanna Mountain, Carlos D. Bustamante, Bonnie Berger, Sarah A. Tishkoff, Brenna M. Henn, Mark Stoneking, David Reich and Brigitte Pakendorf. 2012. The genetic prehistory of southern Africa. ''Nature Communications'' 3, 1143. * Pickrell, Joseph K., Nick Patterson, Po-Ru Loh, Mark Lipson, Bonnie Berger, Mark Stoneking, Brigitte Pakendorf, and David Reich. 2014. Ancient west Eurasian ancestry in southern and eastern Africa. ''Biological Sciences'' 111 (7) 2632–2637. * Pakendorf, Brigitte, Nina Dobrushina and Olesya Khanina. 2021. A typology of small-scale multilingualism. ''International Journal of Bilingualism'' 25 (4).

References

External links

Personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pakendorf, Brigitte 21st-century South African women scientists Women linguists Linguists from South Africa Linguists of Khoisan languages Tungusologists Linguists of Sakha Anthropological linguists Paleoanthropologists Population geneticists Living people French National Centre for Scientific Research scientists Leiden University alumni University of Hamburg alumni Members of Academia Europaea 1970 births