Native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Salikoko S. Mufwene is the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics and the College, Professor on the Committee on Evolutionary Biology, on the Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, and on the Committee on African Studies. His current research is in evolutionary linguistics, which he approaches from an ecological perspective, focused on the phylogenetic emergence of language and on how languages have been affected by colonization and world-wide globalization, especially regarding the indigenization of European languages in the colonies and language birth and death. He brings into all this fresh African, Africanist, and creolist perspectives, having published a great deal in African and creole linguistics.

Mufwene is the founding editor of Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact. His distinctions include lectures at the Collège de France (Fall 2003), teaching at Harvard University (spring 2002) and four times at the Summer Institute of the Linguistic Society of America (1999, 2005, 2015, 2017), and recognition as a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America (January 2018). He was also a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Lyon (2010-2011) and Director of the University of Chicago Center in Paris during the 2013-2014 academic year. He chaired the Department of Linguistics from July 1995 to June 2001 and was the interim faculty director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, at Chicago (2018-2020).

Mufwene has also been elected as a fellow of the following scientific organizations:

• American Philosophical Society, May 2022.
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences, April 2023.
• Appointed to the "Chaire Mondes Francophones" at the Collège de France for the 2023-24 academic year.