Education
He went first to SOAS as a student in 1968, studying Amharic and Linguistics, and completed his doctorate there on the Semitic basis of the Amharic lexicon in 1975, with Edward Ullendorff as supervisor.
He went first to SOAS as a student in 1968, studying Amharic and Linguistics, and completed his doctorate there on the Semitic basis of the Amharic lexicon in 1975, with Edward Ullendorff as supervisor.
He is Professor Emeritus of the Languages of the Horn of Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in the University of London, where he specialized in Amharic and other Ethiopian Semitic languages, as well as various Cushitic languages of the region. He then joined the staff at SOAS where he remained from 1975 until his retirement in September 2006. He taught Amharic language and literature, as well as courses on Ge’ez, Tigrinya, Somali, Oromo, African linguistics, and Ethiopian cultural history.
His linguistic research focuses both on Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic, especially on the Central Cushitic or Agaw languages on which he has published numerous articles and monographs and a book
He acts as a consultant on Ethiopian manuscripts and magic scrolls, and has worked for, amongst others, Christie’s of London, Sam Fogg Rare Books of London, and Princeton University Library. Since 2007 he was involved as an editor and field specialist with the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica project
