GUSTAV MBEHA - Enrolled for Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics

Brief: From NUST Students' Representative Council President (2012) to PhD candidate at University of Cape Town, (UCT) 2018.

Kindly share with us your journey from NUST to UCT. I graduated with my honors degree in English from NUST in 2013 after which I worked as an English teacher during 2014 and 2015.I applied to UCT in 2015 and was privileged to admitted into the prestigious Linguistics Master’s program for 2016. That is where I have been and now I proceed into the PhD program after completing my Master’s.

What inspired you to study Linguistics? I did not enjoy mathematics and science in school, but enjoyed langauges. Coming to Polytechnic, I found that I could do a BA in English and that is when I was introduced to linguistics and I enjoyed it very much. My professors in my undergraduate were instrumental as well.

There are few Namibians with PhD qualifications in Linguistics, what does a PhD in Linguistics mean to you? It means a lot to me because being a person from a multilingual country, I think it gives me a great platform to work with fellow Namibians in our quest in working to make information and education more accessible to many people. Especially those in marginalized communities who do not understand or have full access to English literacy.

How would you use this qualification and the knowledge gained to benefit the NUST students? I currently do research on Namibian languages which excites me. I would love to one day join the linguistics department at NUST and help train more linguists who can do research on Namibian, African and even global languages.

Share with us your success quote! Stay curious and keep asking questions!